


9:15 to Lompoc

by sebviathan



Series: It's 9:15 Somewhere [1]
Category: Psych
Genre: First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Suspension Of Disbelief, casefic, meta jokes, non-canon characters - Freeform, parent-child angst, slots in late s3, that SoCal vibe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 05:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 39,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11890899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sebviathan/pseuds/sebviathan
Summary: Lassiter discovers that his long-estranged father is the lead suspect in a robbery-murder up in Lompoc, and desperately wants to be the one to slap the cuffs on him. Shawn decides to help him do just that.





	1. a precedent

**Author's Note:**

> Themes of and allusions to child abuse are present for the entire fic, but they are by far most explicit, particularly with physical abuse, in this very first chapter.
> 
> No abuse is directly shown happening, but if you really want to avoid discussion of physical abuse entirely, this chapter IS more or less a prologue and isn’t entirely necessary to read before reading the rest of the fic. So feel free to skip! It simply gives a thematic precedent, like the flashbacks in the beginning of each Psych episode, and not reading it won’t impede your understanding of the actual narrative.

**2006**

 

“Mark the date, Gus. It’s the first day of summer,  _ and _ our tenth-case-iversary.”

“Summer started over a week ago, Shawn. And this is only the ninth case we’ve taken for the SBPD — that last one with Robert, or Regina, was a private case that just  _ happened _ to be related to a police case. We never formally signed on. We weren’t even invited to  _ this _ crime scene.”

“Oh, once I solve it, we will be.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, Shawn.”

“Don’t argue semantics, Gus — ”

“It’s  _ not _ semantics, it’s — wait... huh. For once, I think it might actually be semantics.”

Shawn gives him a  _ told-you-so _ smirk and leads him up the road from where they’ve parked, past the police cars and residential vehicles, to the address that they got from Shawn’s police radio. What makes this tenth-case-iversary particularly special, or at least  _ interesting _ if it’s bad to think that way, is that it’s like they’re going back to their very first case!

That is, up until making it through the unguarded front door, all they know is that they’re dealing with a kidnapping.

This time the family isn’t practically famous, though — only upper middle class, with a house that looks right out of Step By Step. (Gus insists that it’s more like Boy Meets World.) Even then, the place seems to have a decent amount of wear and tear that they must not be able to afford to take care of.

And evidently from the pictures on the wall, instead of a young adult, it’s this family’s only child: a thirteen year-old girl. She’s apparently been taken right out of her bedroom... as they discover once they make it there.

“ _ Spencer _ .” 

Lassiter notices him in the doorway immediately, and practically stomps past the confused parents in order to escort the two of them out. 

“I don’t know or care  _ how _ you found the place, but I sure as hell know that no one called for a psychic,” he says, grabbing their shoulders to turn them around. “I’m sure these people don’t need you clowns barging in and making fools out of yourselves while their daughter is missing — ”

“Sorry,” the mother buts in, “but — Detective Lassiter... did you say those men are psychics?”

Lassiter freezes in his tracks. “Well, he’s not  _ really _ _ — _ ”

“Yes, he did!” Shawn says, stepping out of Lassiter’s grasp and into the room, then up to the mother to shake her and her husband’s hands. “Well, not quite. I’m sorry,  _ I’m _ Shawn Spencer, psychic detective for the SBPD. And that black guy over there is my fully human partner, Gurton Buster. ‘Bus’ for short. Lassiter  _ is _ right about one thing — I wasn’t called here, but I  _ was _ drawn here... by forces beyond all of us, who want me to find your daughter.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can see both Lassie and Gus rolling their eyes at the pretentious bullshit that just came out of his mouth, but the parents seem to have mostly bought it. Perhaps not enough, though.

Out of the other corner he sees the girl’s bed, and her bedside table, and her backpack and shoes, and her window and the broken latches and the damage on the windowsill. He decides, then, to have a vision.

Shawn hisses in pretend pain as he clutches his head and reels back, to the audible concern of the parents and even a couple of the cops who are well acquainted with his antics. He lets himself stumble so that he almost actually hurts himself, but catches himself on the bedpost.

“I’m seeing — I’m seeing Cameron, I’m  _ feeling _ her struggle, but — no, it’s not that bad, it’s a twenty-second fight at best, I... the window! I’m feeling it pushed — _ outward _ ? Yes, definitely outward — it was broken from the inside!”

“Are you saying someone came in the house some other way and then just took her  _ out _ through the window?” comes Lassiter’s skeptical tone.

“No, Lassie,” Shawn breathes, slowly letting himself appear more attached to reality. Then he looks to the parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Vanover, is it possible that your daughter just... ran away?”

“What?” says Mr. Vanover, sounding offended. “I mean, I don’t... I don’t know why she would  _ want _ to — ”

“None of her things are missing,” Mrs. Vanover says. “All her clothes — except the pair of pajamas she wore last night, all her books, her  _ backpack _ ... I promise you, it’s all still here!”

“Well, you’ve caused enough trouble, Spencer,” Lassiter starts to say, stepping forward to try to throw him out again _ — _ but, before he can,

“Has Cameron ever tried to run away in the past?” Juliet asks.

“ _O’Hara_ _—_ ”  
“...Well, yes,” Mrs. Vanover says sheepishly, making everyone, including her husband, turn their heads. “But it was three or four years ago—around the age that probably every kid tries to run away! She didn’t even get all the way down the street. And since then she’s been _incredibly_ well-behaved, I promise you.”

“The window latches...” Mr. Vanover starts, walking over to get a closer look at them. “I mean, that could mean a lot of things, couldn’t it? Maybe they broke a week or so ago and we just didn’t notice, and then the kidnapper only had to open the window.”

“That’s certainly possible,” Lassiter tells him, and he’s pretty clearly leaning toward believing it, regardless of how unlikely it is.

Shawn grimaces and pushes himself all the way up, then pushes a finger to his head.

“However, you haven’t received a ransom note, and I’m also sensing that neither of you heard anything during the night.”

“You’re right,” Mr. Vanover says, “we didn’t, but...”

“Ransoms aren’t the only reason thirteen year-old girls are kidnapped, Spencer,” Lassiter says lowly — but probably not low enough because Mrs. Vanover proceeds to let out a sob, and everyone else gives him a sharp, uncomfortable look. He continues regardless: “This isn’t like the McCallum case. You can’t let it set a precedent.”

“Lassie, I want to find Cameron safe as much as you do — possibly even more so! And I think the Vanovers would  _ benefit _ from as many hands on deck as possible, as well as open minds.”

He frowns deeply, glancing a few times in between Shawn and the girl’s parents, then takes a breath.

“Fine. You and Guster stick around and ‘feel the energies’ or whatever it is you do. Just do it with minimal jackassery — and Mr. and Mrs. Vanover, feel free to kick him out... well, whenever. Come on, O’Hara, let’s get a look of the outside.”

Juliet throws him and Gus each a small smile as she follows, and behind her are the parents, who seem hopeful but clearly more drawn to what the “real police” are doing. Really, Shawn prefers it this way.

Now he has the room to himself, plus Gus, and a nameless cop finishing up notes of the scene in the corner.

“I hate to say it, Shawn, but Lassiter’s right about this not being the McCallum case. Shawn — are you listening to me?”

“Hold on.”

Shawn remains where he stands but pivots around to get a decent look at all of the room, and tries especially hard to pick out abnormal details. But still, nothing really stands out — at the same time that he  _ knows _ something is off about this whole scene.

He kneels down next to Cameron’s backpack, hazards a glance to the one cop in this room to make sure they’re not watching him, and uses a pencil from her desk to flip through the contents. Once again, nothing particularly unusual. The closest it gets to noteworthy is that her sketchbook is full of pretty good drawings for a thirteen year-old, and her final report card seems to be straight A’s.

If anything, it makes this weirder.

“Looks like Cameron’s a little over-achiever...,” he mutters.

“Just look at her bookcase,” Gus responds from across the room, sounding impressed. “Harry Potter, Maximum Ride, Eragon, Narnia, pretty much every book by Roald Dahl, and the whole Nancy Drew series....  _ And _ there’s an acoustic guitar in her closet. This kid does it all.”

That other cop is gone by now, so while Gus thumbs through Cameron’s book collection, Shawn heads straight to the aforementioned closet and opens up the bi-fold doors all the way. There’s the guitar, like Gus said, and some stuffed animals, and shoes and clothes. And... that’s it.

Outside the window, he can hear Lassiter talking about having cops up and down the street, asking the neighbors if they saw anything last night, as well as through the nearby woods in case the kidnapper went through there.

Frustrated, he abandons the closet and proceeds to open every drawer in the room. And  _ still _ finds nothing that tells him anything he didn’t know before.

“What exactly are you looking for?” Gus finally asks.

Shawn straightens himself up and pouts. “...I don’t know. We should go take a tour of the rest of the house.”

“How’s that gonna help? Shouldn’t we get a look of the outside — ?”

But Shawn is already out of the room.

Gus catches up to his side. “What would the rest of the house have to do with it when the kidnapping only happened in there?”

“Or  _ did _ it?”

“So you really think the kidnapper came in from somewhere else?”

“Gus, don’t be an absolute madman,” Shawn tells him as they enter the kitchen, and as he opens the Vanovers’ fridge. “Of  _ course _ I don’t think that.”

“Then it... nevermind. What do you expect to get from their fridge, though?”

“A capri sun. Want one?” he asks, pulling out two. 

Gus scowls. “I’m not stealing from the victims of a kidnapping, Shawn.”

“Suit yourself.”

Then, as he closes the door and struggles to stab the straw into the capri sun pouch, Shawn notices all of the things stuck to the front of the fridge. In particular, a chore chart — odd, because Cameron is the only child and neither of the parents have spaces on the chart, but it seems that she does a great deal of work around the house pretty consistently and gets an allowance for it.

Like the mom said, a really well-behaved kid.  _ Hm. _

Truth be told, Shawn has no idea what kind of hints he wants or expects to find around the house. After just another few minutes he’s starting to relent, and he almost decides to finally go investigate outside instead — but then he realizes.

“Gus, I got it!” he says abruptly, slapping his friend on the arm. “There  _ was _ something missing from her room. Her parents just didn’t know because they don’t normally see it!”

“What was it?”

“Her  _ wallet _ . Or whatever else she uses to hold her money. Cameron does all these chores and gets a decent allowance, but where is it, huh? Not in her drawers, not in her closet, not in her backpack, not stuck in her pillows....”

“Maybe she just hides it really well,” Gus suggests.

“But from  _ whom _ ? She has no younger siblings, Gus, and if her parents were the type to steal her money, they wouldn’t give it to her in the first place. Besides, she’d have had to hide it  _ inhumanly _ well. No, this kid...” 

In his own amazement and disbelief, Shawn starts pacing across the upstairs hallway.

“Cameron  _ planned _ this, Gus. She even waited until school got out for the summer so she wouldn’t have to miss time with her friends! She’s been doing as many chores as possible to save up money, and I would bet you  _ all the capri suns in that fridge _ that she spent some of it on new clothes, a new backpack, and probably even some new books so it would look like nothing was missing. And then she mussed up her bed, broke her window, and... and probably got a bus ticket or something. There’s a bus station a few blocks away, isn’t there?”

“Yeah, but... she’s only thirteen, Shawn. Even if she’s really smart and she knows  _ how _ to, why would a thirteen year-old fake their own kidnapping? Wouldn’t that just make more of a hassle?”

“Because...” 

Shawn leans back against the wall, frowns, and wracks his brain. Why  _ indeed _ ? Cameron should be smart enough to have thought of everything, shouldn’t she? 

“...Because she knows that if her parents  _ believed _ she had run away, then they would find her faster,” he realizes slowly, feeling the weight of it creep in. “This girl  _ really _ doesn’t want to be found, Gus.”

“But what could — ?” Then Gus seems to understand the look on Shawn’s face, and suddenly looks very sad. “Oh my God.... Now that I think about it, most of her books were  _ about _ kids escaping abusive situations....”

With minimal effort, Shawn gets a mental walkthrough of the house — he recalls the plaster on the walls, all exactly the size of a hole that a fist would make. The sheer amount of alcohol in the fridge. The condition of the staircase... down which he can now vividly imagine a small person being thrown.

Part of him wants to grab the nearest flowerpot and break it, and otherwise do some extra damage to this house. Part of him wants to run outside, and scream, and do the most damage he  _ can _ to Mr. and Mrs. Vanover’s faces. Part of him even wants to cry on Cameron’s behalf.

But Shawn knows, in spite of his impulsive nature, that none of that would help the situation. Especially not the crying — then Gus would just start crying with him, and they’d both be messes, and nothing would get done.

“We should go tell Lassie and Jules about the bus station hunch,” Gus says a moment later, snapping Shawn out of it. “Then maybe they can go question some people and figure out what line she got on, and — ”

“No, that’s too flimsy!” he yells, not entirely meaning to. “We have to be sure where she went before we do  _ anything _ _ — _ her parents would know where she went, remember? We have to be the ones to get there first.”

Now, to just figure out where Cameron would have gone.

Shawn immediately and swiftly starts walking through the whole house again, scanning the walls for any pictures that might hint to it. It  _ must _ be some place that the whole family has been before, somewhere Cameron has expressed love for, somewhere they’ve visited multiple times in the past but for some reason won’t be visiting in the future....

Then he notices a backdrop for a family photo that bears a resemblance to something he saw in Cameron’s sketchbook. He’s about ninety-percent sure that that’s it.

“Hey Gus, you did that week-long hike in the Santa Ynez Mountains, right?”

“When I was still in college, yeah. The rash I got lasted months. Why?”

“Okay,  _ please _ never tell me about your rashes ever, ever again. More importantly, do you think you can identify where this is based on what the mountain range looks like behind it?”

 

*

 

O’Hara is giving some kind of sympathetic talk to the Vanovers, and Carlton is in the middle of an important call, and then they hear it: A sound that can only be described as... two idiots running around the corner.

“ _ Aaahhhhhh _ — I know where she is!” Spencer shouts as he rushes into the scene, hands over both eyes as though he’s in a great deal of pain.

As positive as Carlton is that it’s not any kind of  _ psychicness _ , the emotion seems intense enough that he can’t help but wonder if it’s at least a little bit real.

“What? Really?” Mrs. Vanover says before anyone else can — and then, when Spencer all but collapses against the windowsill, “Is... he alright?”

Guster runs up next to his friend to help him stand up straight, then tells her,

“He’s having a very intense vision, and it’s taking a lot of energy just to speak — ”

“I swear to god, Spencer, if you really know where she is, you  _ better _ not waste our time — ”

Spencer proceeds to let out a long, loud groan of pain, and nearly causes Guster to fall over with how he’s leaning on him.

“I am  _ seeing _ Cameron, I — I’ve got her but I don’t see the space  _ around _ her, she’s... she’s  _ pulling _ me, Lassie! You’re just gonna have to f — ” He then dissolves into gibberish, as though he’s losing his breath (and doing a very good job of seeming like it).

“What is Shawn saying?” O’Hara asks, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Shawn doesn’t know the address, but he has a psychic link that can give him the directions — more on a physical sense than anything that can be articulated,” Guster translates. “He can drive there, and you guys would have to just follow us.”

Carlton wants to argue. He  _ knows _ that Spencer does not feel a “psychic pull” to this kid, that this must be an act, however good... And more importantly, he has no idea how Spencer could have possibly solved this from inside the house. But the past nine cases with him have proven that underneath the act, there  _ is _ something real going on, and that Spencer has a tendency to solve the unsolvable.

And even if he  _ tried _ to argue, the Vanovers are already getting into the back of McNab’s cruiser, and O’Hara is pulling him by the elbow.

“What are you waiting for? Come on!”

 

*

 

They arrive, one car after another, at a rustic lakeside cabin. It looks like it’s meant to be used for camping, or at least like no one has really lived in it for several decades. No one from this generation would  _ want _ to, with the apparent lack of plumbing.

The only method of transportation already on the property, meanwhile, is a fishing boat.

The Vanovers say, according to McNab, that this is their summer cabin, but they haven’t been here in years. Still, they’re ordered to remain behind while Detectives Lassiter and O’Hara — who at the moment must operate under the assumption that this is a kidnapping — rush the building, guns drawn.

Shawn and Gus are ordered to stay behind under the same pretenses, as they’re unarmed consultants, but they of course don’t listen.

And, of course, the cabin is empty... but for a small kitchen, a bed, and a brand-new-looking backpack. Carlton shares a look with his partner as they holster their guns, turns around to get a better look of the place, and starts to understand.

Simultaneously, Shawn and Gus share a look and wordlessly decide to make their way down to the edge of the lake.

It’s only after a few minutes of searching around the lakefront that Shawn spots what  _ must _ be Cameron, clearly bathing. After another minute, she spots them, too.

“Don’t worry, Cameron!” he shouts so she can hear him, then covers his eyes before approaching further. Gus immediately does the same. 

“This is private property!” she shouts back. She sounds desperate.

“We’re with the police, Cam — can I call you Cam? Sorry, I’ve just always liked that nickname — but I promise you! Everything is gonna be  _ fine _ .”

She doesn’t sound any closer to coming out of the water, but just then, Shawn hears two sets of feet jogging down the bank. He twists around and sees exactly the two he hoped to see — as opposed to Mr. and Mrs. Vanover.

“Speak of the devil,” he says far too casually, looking between them. 

Then Gus turns around and uncovers his eyes, too. “You guys, don’t let the parents get to — ”

“We know,” Juliet interrupts. She swallows and looks urgently out into the lake, but, like the rest of them, make no effort to urge Cameron out yet.

A few seconds of silence, other than the light waves hitting the sand bank, pass. Then Shawn takes a breath.

“I gotta say, Gus, Lassie, Jules... This tenth-case-iversary has turned out to be a real bummer.”

The girl’s still in the water, but Carlton can see bruises from here.  _ Jesus Christ. _

“It sure is,” he finds himself agreeing.

 

*

 

He almost feels bad for finding her. Yes, her parents are getting arrested, but now Cameron might wind up in the system — which was probably what a kid as smart as her was specifically trying to avoid.

“All she wanted to do was hang out, catch some fish, re-read Harry Potter, and live in peace,” Gus agrees. “And then  _ we _ had to crash it the same day she got here. Honestly? I’d be pissed if I was her.”

“She’ll be thankful later,” comes Lassiter’s voice from around the corner, making both of them jolt against the wall of the cabin. He doesn’t acknowledge it and simply sidles up next to them. “If nothing else, she’ll realize that she never would have been able to survive here for more than a few months, anyway. Even if she  _ was _ able to catch fish on the regular and find edible plants, come winter the resources would have run out.”

“Wow, Lassie, that’s... very sensitive of you,” Shawn deadpans.

“Thank you,” Carlton responds genuinely, though without looking at him.

Shawn and Gus share a look.

“What I’m confused about,” the former says, “is why the parents even wanted to find her so badly. I mean — I  _ sensed _ it, I  _ know _ the emotion was real. It wasn’t an act, and I wasn’t even able to sense that they were...  _ like that _ at first.... I just don’t get it!”

At that outburst, Gus looks and feels too awkward to say anything. But Carlton, who is also pissed with himself for not catching it earlier, and who has very clearly been impressed against his will this entire time, speaks up immediately.

“I’ve seen this plenty of times before, Spencer, and I know I’m going to see it plenty of times again. Parents who abuse their kids, no matter what kind of abuse it is, rarely seem like it on the outside. They cover up, put on a mask — hell, they may even convince  _ themselves _ that they still love their child, and that that makes it okay....”

For a moment he trails off, loses himself, clenches his jaw, goes white-knuckled — and it’s obvious to all of them that he and Shawn alike are murderously angry about this.

And, in spite of how many times Carlton has seen it... he honest-to-god cannot understand it.

“...Some people are just evil, Spencer,” he tells him, much softer than before. “And you’re gonna have to get used to it in this line of work.”


	2. taunt material to last years

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m mentioning this now instead of in the prologue’s notes because the events of these fics would have occurred in between, in this order:
> 
> [Hook, Line, and Spencer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10698117) / [Confidentiality](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10755369) / [A Strange Middle Ground](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10821843)
> 
> They aren’t necessary to read first, but they’re canon-compliant and 100% in the same universe as this fic because they give a little extra context to the main narrative. With the last, especially, which is alluded to multiple times during this fic.

**Almost exactly 3 years, and 34 and a half cases later; 2009**

 

Their third (so far) splurge-buy of Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos since solving Lyin’ Ryan’s case sits halfway on Gus’s desk, and halfway in their stomachs. 

Some of it might be coming back up, actually.

“At this rate, Shawn, we will be dead of dual heart attacks even before we’re broke,” Gus says after swallowing a bite.

Shawn immediately shoves the rest of his into his mouth. “As long as we get to die at the same time, looking each other right in the eye and possibly holding hands, it’s absolutely worth it.”

Gus then gives him a very odd look, and Shawn can’t tell whether it’s because of the comment about their deaths, or because some fry bits flew out of his mouth. He decides not to ask, and instead starts flipping through channels on their box TV.

Commercial, commercial, gritty show he has no interest in, soap opera that he  _ would _ have an interest in if Gus weren’t here, commercial, golf (which he can’t imagine  _ anyone _ watches), a new-ish cartoon with a really ugly animation style,  _ ooh _ _ — _ an infomercial for a pressure cooker....

He only gets to watch about a minute of things this pressure cooker can do before Gus swallows his current fry and says,

“Shawn, you know damn well you are  _ not  _ gonna buy one of those — gimme the remote.”

“No, I wanna see — !”

Before he knows it, the remote has been snatched right out of his hands with too much strength for him to resist, and the channel is being changed again. For a moment he’s too focused on the fact that  _ Gus must have been working out lately _ to be mad, but then —

“Channel 7 News, Gus? Really? The weather’s not even on, and I’m pretty sure the weather person on channel 7 is a dude anyway, which makes him not your type — unless you have something to tell me?”

“I like to be  _ aware _ of what’s going on in the greater Southern California area, Shawn,” he tells him as-a-matter-of-factly. 

“What for? Chances are it won’t affect us, and most of the news on non-local channels is depressing shit anyway. If I wanted to make myself sad, Gus, I would just watch that video of a monkey getting confused by a magic trick.”

“Don’t remind me of — wait, hey, something about our county is coming up next....”

Gus turns the volume up, and Shawn sinks into his rolling chair before turning it back around.

_ “Yesterday evening, a Chavero gas station in Lompoc was robbed at gunpoint by a masked assailant,”  _ the news anchor reports. _ “Cashier Patrick Martin was shot dead by this assailant before they made off with the cash. One of two witnesses reports:  _ ‘It was all so fast, and Patrick didn’t even do anything to give this guy a reason to shoot him.’ _ ” _

The other news anchor continues:  _ “No security footage of the robbery and murder is available, but the aforementioned witness was able to get a good look at the car and its license plate as it drove away _ _ — _ _ a black Nissan Sentra with the plate number 6CDI301, that was reported stolen from a restaurant less than an hour earlier, and which has yet to be found.” _

_ “Just earlier today, this theft was tracked to a valet who disappeared from the restaurant directly prior to the car being discovered missing _ _ — _ _ and who is now the lead suspect in this robbery-murder.” _

A picture of the suspect appears onscreen, and Gus begins to say, “Hey, doesn’t that kinda look like — ?”

_ “Ex-valet  _ Carlton Lassiter _ is also known to be an ex- _ con _ , records reveal. He only recently completed a sentence in San Luis Obispo for assault, and Lompoc Police warn that he should be seen as very dangerous. If you see him or this car, please report it to your local authorities immediately. Updates to follow.” _

If there had been food in either of their mouths, it would have been on the floor before the stupid ‘ex-con’ joke was finished. In the moment, Shawn and Gus have both forgotten about their fries entirely, and they spend the next several seconds gaping between the TV screen and each other.

And finally,

“UH, WHAT? SHAWN — ”

“OH MY GOD, CAN WE REWIND IT? IS IT — ”

Gus does manage to rewind it and prove that they were not, in fact, having a collective hallucination. That there is an actual 60-something criminal out there with the name  _ Carlton Lassiter _ , and the decent resemblance to boot. That it’s also possible to embarrass themselves from within their own office — but neither of them can be bothered to draw the blinds while they flail around.

“Shawn, it’s... It’s like we were just handed taunt material to last  _ years _ on a platter of gold by  _ Jesus himself _ .”

“Forget  _ Jesús _ , Gus — this is the kind of beautiful,  _ beautiful _ coincidence that can only come from the hands of mi amigo, Señor Diablo....” 

Gus reels back and clicks his tongue, which gets Shawn to drop his grin.

“Okay, maybe don’t forget Jesus. But man, you  _ know  _ it is our civic duty to get down to that station literally  _ right now _ and shove this in Lassie’s face.”

_ That _ gets him back in it. Gus tells him  _ you know that’s right _ , grabs the very last Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos and shoves the whole thing in his mouth, and makes it halfway to the door before Shawn registers what happened.

When he does, he chases after him with all the strength his legs can muster, yelling,

“Gus, you spit that out  _ right freakin now _ !”

 

*

 

He never knows how long he’ll be able to avoid Spencer’s antics in between cases (or how long he’ll have to wait for Spencer to come shake things up, depending how honest he’s being with himself at any given moment), but the interim is rarely so brief. After the particularly impressive solve and exciting end to the last case, Carlton can’t even readily convince himself that he’s annoyed the moment he and Guster come into view.

Though it becomes a lot easier in the following moments.

“Lassie!” Shawn shouts, purposely disruptive as he and Gus hurry their way across the floor to his desk. “I am so  _ disappointed _ in you.”

At that, Carlton merely leans back in his chair and raises a sharp eyebrow. A few others, including O’Hara, do the same.

Now that they’re closer, he sees that Guster is carrying a laptop.

And Shawn sees that Lassiter is wearing a brand new tie that was almost  _ certainly _ from the TJ Maxx sale that he himself advised him about. He cheeks a smirk — he’d comment on it if he wasn’t here for bigger, better things.

“You’ve been lying to  _ all _ of us, Lassie,” he says, maintaining a straight face. “Or at least omitting things — that is a type of lying, right, Gus? Or am I thinking of a method of preparing eggs — ”

“What are you idiots talking about?” Carlton interjects before the tangent can go too far, and trying to hide his slight worry. While he’s used to Spencer’s elaborate bits by this point, part of him is terrified that they have some actual dirt.

Gus opens his laptop, and Juliet immediately starts inching over, obviously curious, in her rolling chair.

“Either sometime over the years you were cloned,” Shawn starts —

“Or you  _ are _ a clone,” adds Gus —

“Or...  _ most _ likely — ”

“Eh, I’d say equally likely...”

“...You, Lassie, are living a double life. Head detective by  _ day _ _ — _ ”

“Criminal by some  _ other _ days,” Gus finishes, setting the laptop down on Lassiter’s desk.

For a few seconds Carlton merely shakes his head and blinks repeatedly, needing to recover from the mental whiplash of Spencer and Guster speaking like goddamn Lock Shock and Barrel. He then realizes, with a slight shock, that the two of them are now on either side of him.

He hesitates, but he does click on whatever news clip they want him to see.

Before the news anchor has gotten even through the robbery witness’s statement, though, he’s already unwilling to wait through this nonsense.

“Spencer, why are you — ?”

“ _ Shh _ , just wait for it!”

_ Fine. _ Even if he wasn’t honestly curious, it’s not like he has anything better to do right now.

For a good three-fourths of the video, though, he can’t for the life of him figure out how this relates to him, or even how Spencer might think so. Then the suspect’s picture comes up. And every part of him freezes.

When the video ends, Shawn just barely takes note of the way Lassiter simply continues to stare, wide-eyed. Figures the guy must just be in as much shock as they were earlier.

“Oh my god,” Carlton mutters.

“That is  _ crazy _ uncanny...” Juliet says from behind all of them.

“Right?” Shawn agrees, throwing a grin back at her. “Slap a few more wrinkles on you, Lassie, and gray up the rest of your hair, maybe just remove that twinkle from your eye, and he’s your spitting image!”

He’s been expecting Lassiter to respond with something scathing, or to tell him and Gus to get out, or even to just pretend he doesn’t care. But instead, he just... keeps staring at the screen, mouth slightly open.

“Okay, getting a little creepy, Lassie.... Is this dude really freaking you out that bad — ?”

“That’s my father,” Carlton finally brings himself to say.

Oh.

Oh,  _ shit. _

Gus’s mouth is briefly as wide open as it was earlier in the Psych office, but then in a much more uncomfortable way. Shawn blinks exactly once and is unable to tear his gaze from Lassiter, wide-eyed, lips pursed awkwardly.

In slow succession, Carlton scowls, closes the laptop, and turns to look at the rest of them. Juliet is already rolling back to her desk to avoid confrontation.

Shawn really feels like he should have guessed this long before they left the Psych office.

 

***

 

Carlton hasn’t seen his father in person since before he started college, and since then, the only interactions they’ve had is the guy calling him up and asking him for money.

And  _ that _ hasn’t worked on him in the past two decades, either. He’s been aware of his dad’s history of lawbreaking for most of his life — partially because his mother has always kept tabs — and he likes to think he got over any sense of familial obligation sometime in early high school. The only emotions he’s harbored for that man in this time have been annoyance. 

But now.... Well,  _ now _ his dad has done more than some petty theft. And Carlton doesn’t know how to feel about it.

After Spencer and Guster high-tail it out of the station, he spends the rest of the day trying to behave as normal, to forget what he saw — but now that it’s been brought up, it’s like he can’t avoid it. People won’t bring it up to him again directly, but he hears the news clip playing, or catches a glimpse of his father’s suspect photo, on several other cops’ computers.

And subsequently yells at them to get back to work, of course.

But it wears on him. And by the next day, he’s finding it simply impossible to resist the urge to search his father in the system.

_ Carlton Eli Lassiter _ _ — _ the man who  _ would _ be the reason Carlton has never been particularly fond of his own name if his peers hadn’t gotten to it first. The man who first, though accidentally, showed him exactly what it is cops do.

There’s a pretty long list of offenses, many of which he was already fully aware of due to his mother. For all her years without the guy, and even knowing she was never really into him (or any other man, for that matter), she’s liked to keep track as well as she could and then rant to him on the phone about it. Just for the sake of gossip, he supposes. 

But she never told him that his father was back in the  _ state _ , let alone the county.

Hardly an hour or so away for the past couple years.... 14 months in the California Men’s Colony prison in San Luis Obispo, for minor assault and then resisting arrest.  _ Sounds like him _ . Then the past few months of living in Lompoc, and one working as a restaurant valet. God, the idea of trusting a guy like his dad with his  _ car _ ....

Clearly, it backfired. Though, quite honestly, not in a way Carlton ever expected that man to be capable of. 

Of course, a decent handful of violent criminals he’s put away have been first-time offenders. Things get out of hand, or they get desperate, or maybe they’ve had it in them their whole life and just always hid it.

Whatever the case is with his father, he knows, at least, that he wants him back in prison where he belongs.

There’s just... something else. Something keeping him from just going about his day without wondering about his dad. Something keeping him from focusing on his reports and something just  _ itching _ in the back of his head, in his hands, in his —

God, he can’t just  _ sit _ here!

But what else  _ can _ he do? It’s a Lompoc case. Even if that wasn’t too far away to be driving back and forth for an investigation, it isn’t in his jurisdiction and he has minimal access to the details, and he’d be unprofessional to take part in such a personal case regardless —

Except it  _ shouldn’t _ be personal because he doesn’t  _ care _ about his dad! So what if they’re blood-related? That doesn’t mean he has any emotional connection to him that would inhibit justice.

Now that Carlton  _ knows _ that the guy is relatively within his reach after committing a robbery and murder, he simply cannot stop imagining himself being the one to catch him. It’s stupid and some weird brand of sentimental, but this has drudged up a lot of memories he thought he’d lost for good and  _ now _ ... he feels like he  _ needs _ this. If only for some much-needed final words on the way to the police station afterward.

He isn’t sure what he would even say, yet, or how he’d start any kind of personal investigation of this, but... If there’s one source he has that the Lompoc police probably don’t, it’s an old lesbian with a weird investment in her loser ex-husband’s drama.

Acting on an impulse (or a desire he’s been ignoring for the past several days, whatever you want to call it), Carlton storms out of the station the very second his lunch break starts, intending to pay his mother a visit.

And he doesn’t spare a single passing thought to the idea that anyone, even his partner, might have noticed how he’s been acting.

 

*

 

Like anyone with half a brain and some experience in knowing Carlton Lassiter, Shawn and Gus stay far away from the SBPD for the next few days.

They also wordlessly agree that they won’t be trying to go back for at least a week, but... their wallets are starting to make a compelling case against that. 

Shawn’s wallet, that is. Gus refuses to pay for more of those Fries Quatro Queso Dos Fritos,  _ and _ he claims that he had no part in deciding to do something so risky to Lassie like that. That it was Shawn’s fault exclusively because he of all people should have deduced the guy was Lassie’s dad, because  _ of course _ .

Part of him can’t argue with that. Most of him can’t even care about that argument after they initially make it back to the Psych office, though, as he’s too busy thinking about the  _ game-changing _ information they’ve just received.

Gus doesn’t seem nearly as intensely curious as Shawn is about it, but he’s known him for years so he knows how Shawn gets... so he puts up with it.

“You think this probably has a lot to do with Lassie being... the way he is?” he asks, tossing a ball while lying back on the Psych couch, as though Gus is his therapist.

When Gus merely shrugs, Shawn starts answering his own question. He does a lot of that.

“Here’s what I don’t get,” Shawn says without precedent the next morning, “ _ Why _ have we never  _ heard _ of him before?”

“Lassie must be ashamed of it or something,” he says later that day, over a hot pocket. “Would you be ashamed? I think I’d be more excited.”

To  _ that _ one, Gus actually responds.

“Well, considering it would play into the Black stereotype of having a deadbeat and/or criminal father.... Yeah, a little bit.”

“...Fair enough.”

Ultimately, his mostly one-sided conversations keep coming back to some variation of, “Man, I just can’t fucking believe  _ Lassiter’s _ dad is a murderer.”

And subsequently, from Gus, “I can.”

It seems that just when Shawn’s endless questions finally start to burn out, and he’s thinking of trying to get a foot in a case (aka some promised money) again, he gets a text from Jules:

 

[ _ So, Lassiter has spent the past week pretty much obsessing over his dad. IDK if he realizes how obvious he’s being about it but I’m worried, and he refuses to talk to me about it. I think you should try. -J  _ ]

 

Shawn immediately texts back,  _ no offense lol but what makes you think he’ll talk to me if he won’t talk to you? :I _

 

[  _ You’re the one who told him about his dad in the first place! And you know Lassiter just doesn’t like venting for the sake of venting, meaning he WILL talk if he thinks you can solve it. If anyone has the ability to help him out it’s you. -J _ ]

 

Well... goddamn, she’s right. And Shawn himself is no stranger to daddy issues, so if nothing else, he can relate in a way that Lassiter can’t objectively deny.

Not that he feels particularly ready to go spill his guts right out onto Lassiter’s lap in an effort to make him feel better. No, Shawn Spencer doesn’t play that, and he doesn’t think he’d even  _ want _ to be so direct if he was able... for a number of internal-conflict-related reasons.

Instead, he sees one obvious solution, which he takes to Gus that afternoon.

“Guess who has two thumbs, is finally figuring out how to whistle, and got  _ us _ a case!”

Before Gus can say anything, he jerks both thumbs back at himself and gives a sharp, albeit sort of pathetic whistle.

“Really?” Gus stands up from his desk, looking relieved. “What is it?”

“You know how Carlton Lassiter  _ senior _ still hasn’t been found? Well, we’re gonna do what the Lompoc police can’t.”

“Wait — ” Gus frowns. “Is Vick loaning us to the LPD, or did they contact us directly? Or did you contact them? Would Vick even be okay with — ”

“Buddy, we’re not doing this for the LPD,” he tells him. “We’re doing this for Lassie.”

“ _ Lassie _ hired us to catch his dad? Man, he must really be desperate, like you said....”

“Well...” Shawn goes through a brief face journey, and notices Gus start to catch on. “He didn’t exactly  _ hire _ us — ”

“So we  _ wouldn’t _ be getting any money from this,” Gus says in his  _ let-me-get-this-straight _ voice.

Shawn pauses.

“...No.” Gus immediately sits back down and turns his attention back to minesweeper, and Shawn sighs. “Well, I mean, maybe! There’s no telling for sure we won’t. But it’s  _ Lassie _ , man — we  _ have _ to help him!”

“Honestly, Shawn, it feels like we’ve been doing a lot of that lately,” he says without looking up from his screen. “Did Lassiter even  _ ask _ for our help?”

Shawn would be affronted if he wasn’t vaguely embarrassed to admit that  _ no, he didn’t _ _ — _ and if he didn’t think Gus had every right to be annoyed.

His silence, however brief, seems to be a good enough of an answer for Gus, anyway.

“There was when you jumped at the chance to prove Lassiter didn’t kill Chavez,” he starts, lifting up a hand and using his fingers to count. “Which I’ll admit I was happy to work on, even if I still don’t fully believe he didn’t do it. Then there was just a couple weeks ago when we stopped at the station for ten entire minutes to tell Lassie about a tie sale. Not a case, but a little weird. There was the Christmas present you ‘borrowed’ my money to buy for him last year to make up for the snowglobe from the year before. Hell, you even once volunteered us to solve one of Lassiter’s cases  _ for _ him and let him believe he did it himself — ”

“Okay!” Shawn throws his hands up before Gus can continue, and before his own face can get any redder against his will. “ _ Okay _ , I get it — we all get it, that kid outside gets it, the NSA watching you through your webcam gets it, Billy Mays, god rest his soul,  _ gets it _ _ — _ ”

“ _ Hey _ _ — _ too soon, Shawn. But  _ do _ you even get it? Because I don’t!”

“What don’t you get?” Shawn asks reflexively, 

He then wishes in every following second that he didn’t, due to the look Gus gives him. 

“Seriously, Shawn? ...Why and  _ how _ are you always so ready to help out a guy who... if  _ nothing else _ , has got to be the biggest threat to your little psychic charade getting found out?”

“First of all, Gus, it’s  _ our _ little psychic charade. You’re in this with me for the long haul whether you like it or not.”

“That’s not the point!” He looks genuinely frustrated with him now, which is something that Shawn honestly hates to see. “He barely even shows any gratitude when we do help him, and all of his favors are back-handed! I bet if we weren’t technically ‘civilians,’ he wouldn’t even come to our rescue.”

Shawn could just throw out the excuse that he’s doing this on the behalf of Juliet — and he could show him the text, and lie and say that this is just for her sake  _ because they’re partners and she cares about him _ .... But part of him is just  _ pissed _ at the notion that Lassiter doesn’t give a shit about them. 

Crazily enough, he doesn’t want to take the easy way out of this argument.

“Wait, do you  _ really _ think he would just let us die, or even get arrested, just because he’s kind of a jerk? That’s so obviously a  _ front _ he puts up, Gus! If he really wanted us out of the detective game he’d have done something already.”

“He could only do that if he had proof, Shawn. Unless you  _ told _ him — ?”

“No! I — how long have you known me, man? Of course I didn’t. But I read faces, I read  _ actions _ , I read just about anything but actual thoughts unless they’re yours — ” God, Shawn’s been sitting on this one for a long time. He struggles to find a way to explain it that won’t make Gus angrier. “And Lassie’s just.... I mean, I’ve spent more time around him than you have, so in _ any _ case I have a more informed opinion on anything Lassie-related, and... Well, I  _ know _ , deep down in there — ”

“Oh, my God,” Gus says, slowly and quietly, just barely frowning. And he holds it for several seconds as his mouth and eyes both widen. “You... on  _ Lassiter _ ?”

In his sudden wave of anxiety and fear, Shawn realizes that he’s been gesturing toward his heart, and drops his hands. And he tries, while unable to help his face heating up, to appear as innocent as possible.

“...I wouldn’t say — ”

“Carlton Lassiter!  _ Of all people _ !” Gus continues, sounding practically horrified. “Oh my God — oh my  _ God _ , Shawn! How long?”

Shawn freezes in place and does not open his mouth.

“You  _ don’t _ _ — _ ” Gus pauses, shakes his head a bit like he’s trying to wrap his head around it, and takes a deep breath. “Okay, I  _ know _ you have a tendency to get attached to just about everyone and everything. Hell, yesterday you cried because Craig from the smoothie shop quit — ”

“You said you wouldn’t bring that up!”

“But — Shawn...  _ why _ would you do this to yourself?”

Gus’s shoulders drop, and he doesn’t seem any kind of upset anymore so much as confused, and that’s a big relief to Shawn. But he didn’t intend to admit to anything of this nature in the first place, and he  _ really _ wishes Gus didn’t have to know about this yet... and he especially doesn’t want to go into any kind of detail.

He wants to book it out of the Psych office and avoid speaking to Gus for the next week the same way they’ve been avoiding Lassie, really. And he very nearly acts on that impulse before his friend’s eyes manage to bore deeply enough into his.

Shawn averts his gaze, sits down, and makes a very swift, unintelligible confession.

“...What?”

“ _ Yudonnoimlikido _ ,” he repeats.

“You’re mumbling, Shawn.”

“ _ There’s a side of Lassie you haven’t seen that I have _ , okay?” he finally says, making eye contact again. “It’s not nearly as bad of an idea as you think. Probably. Well... it’s TBA for now.”

“It’s TBD — and no, you have  _ not  _ heart it both ways, and more importantly.... That’s one heck of a predicament you’re in, Shawn, but I simply cannot follow you into it. I’ve had my fill of thankless, free detective work for the year, thank-you-very-much.... Sorry, but you’re on your own with this one.”

Once again, Gus goes right back to his game, as Shawn can tell by the pattern of his mouse-clicking.

Shawn folds his arms and pouts, but relatively quickly comes to terms. By the very nature of this potential case, he knows he won’t actually be  _ on his own _ for any part of it.

 

***

 

Having left the station shortly before midnight, probably the  _ last _ thing Carlton expected to see when he got home was Spencer, propped up against his door and looking like he was asleep before he heard the car door slam.

_ God, finally,  _ Shawn mutters to himself as he wakes up — not that he actually  _ was _ fully asleep, but he was pretty close to it. He’d figured Lassiter would be home much earlier and rationalized continuing to wait with ‘ _ well, it’s already late _ .’ For a bit before just a moment ago, he was starting to think he should have just called him instead.

Now he’s rubbing his eyes out of their sleepy haze, unsure whether it’s eye boogers keeping him from seeing clearly, or just the only light source being Lassiter’s headlights and an outdoor lamp surrounded by moths. And he’s airing out his shirt for all the sweat that’s accumulated in the summer evening heat, and he’s unconsciously pushing his hair back.

And Carlton is too tired to say anything until he makes it to his porch.

“You better be here for a good reason, Spencer,” he mutters, barely making eye contact as he searches for his keys. “I worked a double shift today and I  _ especially _ don’t have time for your nonsense right now.”

“I’m here for the same reason that you worked that double shift,” Shawn says easily.

_ That _ gets his attention and subsequently makes him drop his keys. Shawn picks them up for him before he can react, in his exhaustion, and he just barely mouths a  _ thanks _ as he takes them.

“Don’t you think that’s counter-productive, Lassie?” he continues.

“That what is?”

“Working harder when you’re stressed. I just don’t get it — you’re only stressing yourself out  _ worse _ in the long run, and then you’re gonna work harder and harder until eventually you explode! Haven’t you ever seen the snail race episode of Spongebob?”

Some especially exhausted part of Carlton wants to laugh. Most of him, though, is just annoyed.

“Figures the only thing you know about hard work is from cartoons...,” he mutters, finally opening his door.

Shawn follows him in. “Only about thirty-percent of it, actually. In fact, it’s kinda what I’m here to propose — _ oh _ , wow,” he interrupts himself once he gets an eyeful of the place. “You really haven’t changed  _ anything _ since I was last here?”

While Spencer walks in and looks around further, Carlton scowls and shuts the door. He doesn’t really know why he hasn’t just told him to leave already.

“Well,  _ yeah _ , it’s only been a few months since — ” He’d rather not bring up the Drimmer incident, if only for all that happened later that night — and he realizes something else, anyway. “Wait. What are you  _ proposing _ ?”

In spite of the six or so hours he had to mentally prepare, and without fully understanding why, Shawn hesitates. His eyes light up, and his mouth drops open, and he takes a breath, and... his brain is left scrambling for a second.

“...I’m gonna help you find your dad,” he finally tells him, trying to sound as casual as possible.

Carlton frowns at the same time his heart skips a beat, and he says, reflexively, “What makes you think I’m even trying to find him?”

Shawn scoffs.

“You haven’t seen your father in years, and you just found out he’s wanted for robbery and murder. Who  _ wouldn’t _ be after him in your place, Lassie?”

“How’d you know I hadn’t seen him in years?”

“For the hundred-and-twelfth time, I’m a psychic.”

He frowns again, not just because he knows it’s not true, but because he’s offended Spencer would keep that up when it’s just the two of them. And then he heads to the kitchen to pour himself a shot of something.

“...O’Hara told you, didn’t she?”

“Potato, potahto,” Shawn shrugs, following him. “Regardless, what Jules did not tell me but which  _ both _ of us know is that there’s simply no way you’re gonna find him on your own — if for no other reason than that you don’t have the resources.”

Unfortunately, he’s right. Carlton’s one shot at a lead ended earlier today when he confronted his mother, who insisted that  _ no _ , his father had  _ not _ contacted her in any way, and she currently has no tabs on him that he can’t find himself. Or, really, it ended when her girlfriend politely escorted him out.

Which Shawn can see, though not down to the details, in his face and the way he downs his shot.

“And I’m... offering myself up to be your resources,” he finishes.

Carlton sets his glass down, tightens his lips, and stares intensely at him.

“Why?”

“ _ Why? _ Because finding missing people is my  _ thing _ , man! Missing,  _ or _ hiding, or playing hide-and-go-seek but  _ only _ if they’re not cheating... or on the run. You know this, Lassie, you’ve seen the proof with your own two strikingly blue eyes — ”

“Yeah — _ wait _ _ — _ no, yeah, I mean...” Thrown off by those last few words, Carlton shakes his head for a moment. “Why would you  _ want _ to help me find him? You should know I can’t afford to pay you.”

Shawn is suddenly reminded of the conversation he had earlier with Gus, and he knows he is  _ really _ not ready to have the same one with Lassiter.

“Lassie, the truth is...,” he starts, and he pauses and glances at that bottle of whiskey on the counter. Carlton raises an eyebrow, suddenly very nervous. “...Getting to meet the man who fathered  _ you _ will be payment enough.”  _ Oh. _ “And... I haven’t exactly kept track, but I’m sure at this point I owe you at least one or two favors... partially by being the one to remind you of your dad in the first place. I’m hoping  _ this _ will even things out.”

Carlton is pretty sure he would have found out about his dad by some other means anyway — likely only after he got caught, though. If anything, Spencer gave him the opportunity of a  _ lifetime _ .

But he doesn’t tell him that. 

He does, however, hesitate to accept the offer, genuine as he’s been convinced that it is.

“...You know I don’t even have jurisdiction on this case.”

“Okay, so... technically it’ll be more like  _ I’m _ finding him, and  _ you’re _ helping,” Shawn rationalizes. Lassiter doesn’t seem nearly as annoyed by that as he thought he’d be.

“That doesn’t really make my investigating any less illegal after a point — ”

“ _ Lassie _ ,” he presses, “do you want to find your robbing, murdering dad, or not?”

They stare at each other in intense silence for a good five seconds. Shawn swears he can see everything coming together behind the other man’s eyes, and Carlton can somehow tell that that’s true.

“...Okay, Spencer,” he says, and Shawn’s shoulders relax in relief. “Vick is forcing me to take a day off tomorrow, anyway. We can start then. I just... need to get some goddamn sleep first.”

He starts to put away the whiskey, but Shawn stops him —

“Hey, mind pouring me a shot of that?”

“Right before you get on your motorcycle? You’re out of your mind.”

“I could just spend the night here,” he suggests, half-serious, and also half-regretting it the moment it comes out.

Carlton just glares at him, exhaustion truly creeping in, as he continues to put it away. 

Shawn thinks that’s pretty fair.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> idk if anyone caught it, but ‘Chavero’ is a purposeful mix between the gas station companies Valero and Chevron. Most places of business mentioned (or at least visited) in Psych are entirely fictional, anyway, and i didn’t want to use a real place as a setting for a murder.


	3. a manhunt film

He’s just about to call and ask what the _hell_ Spencer is doing when he finally hears a knock at the door.

“Change your mind?” Carlton says, annoyed, as soon as he opens it.

“Obviously not, because I’m _here_.”

“I texted you three times!” God, he feels like kid, saying that.

“Well, sorry, Lassie, I haven’t yet mastered the art of sleep-texting. I’m almost there, though. I just keep forgetting to reach for my _phone_ and not my hotplate....”

“So you slept in.” _Of course._

The truth is, while neither of them know it, Shawn got about half as much sleep as he did. And not for lack of trying. But that’s not something he wants to talk about, as they both have something _much_ more important to focus on.

“...Is that what you’re wearing?”

Carlton looks down at himself, and frowns, and quickly realizes that this isn’t the first or even the second time he’s had this exact conversation with Spencer. Still, he can’t stop himself from responding,

“What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

“You’re not _supposed_ to be looking like a cop, remember?” he says, leaning against the doorframe and gesturing to Lassiter’s whole... self. “As far as anyone needs to be concerned, we’re either psychic detectives or we’re regular joes. You’ll throw them off with the suit, man.”

“I am _not_ going to pretend to be a psychic with you,” Carlton tells him, deathly serious.

“Yeah, I don’t expect you to. But you gotta change, Lassie. You don’t need to go full beach-douche, just... lose the jacket, and unbutton the top button or two.”

God, he really hates taking _fashion advice_ from Spencer — or he hates having Spencer give him unasked-for advice and immediately following that advice _in front of him_ , because it makes him feel like he just handed Spencer a chunk of his dignity on a platter.... But in this case, like a handful of others, he figures he can compromise some of the social wisdom he clearly doesn’t have in the first place.

So he sighs and leaves the doorway, at which Shawn follows him inside, and refuses to make eye contact while he shrugs off the jacket and drapes it over a chair. He especially can’t face him while he undoes the top buttons, as much as he’s aware of how dumb that is.

“Alright,” he finally says, turning and holding his arms out in spite of himself. “How’s this?”

“Uh.” Shawn’s not-so-subconscious gives an A+ to the visible sternum bush, but something else is somehow far more noticeable. “...Oh, no.”

“What?”

“You look too much like Gus, and it’s—oh no. Okay, uh, maybe lose the belt? Or put on some jeans instead of the slacks.... How about untucking the shirt—”

“I’m not losing the belt and I’m _definitely_ not untucking my shirt,” Carlton says, already exhausted by this. Though he does, relatively easily, understand that him dressing like Guster would be pretty weird. “...But _fine_ , I’ll go get some stupid jeans.”

He also honestly hates wearing denim, for how restricting it is and how casual and unassuming it makes him look... but he supposes that’s the point. He pretty much only owns jeans for situations that are more or less like this, anyway.

Still, even after he has the belt back on over the jeans, he can’t help but feel a little naked. Are the jeans too tight? Is it his arms?—Is his form just too obvious? Maybe it’s just that he doesn’t have his badge, or—

His fucking _gun_ , obviously. Jesus.

Carlton hurries to strap his back-holster on, grabs the handgun he keeps under his pillow to shove in there, and throws a dark windbreaker on to hide it. Partially from the public, and partially from Spencer, who will probably throw some kind of fit about him having it.

When he walks back out, Shawn makes no effort to seem like he wasn’t just searching through his food cabinets, but simply turns around. And looks him up and down with narrowed eyes.

“You have a gun under that, don’t you?”

_Dammit, whatever._

“I also have bad circulation so I need the jacket anyway—” Why did he feel the need to say that? “Regardless, I’m _not_ changing again, let’s just _go_ ,” Carlton nearly growls—and by the time he’s finished saying that, he’s almost out the door.

Shawn takes one more quick glance through the cabinet for something edible, and still sees nothing, before heading out with him.

 

*

 

For Carlton, at least, it only seems to sink in that _they’re really doing this_ once he drives past that Lompoc Next Exit sign.

The past hour of conversation has mostly consisted of Shawn saying “horses!” every time they drove past horses—and also every time they drove past cows, and in one case a camel... and also pointing out dogs in other cars. Then Carlton, subsequently, unable to help a tiny smile but still feeling like he was chaperoning a child.

Despite that, the very moment he takes that exit, he asks,

“So what’s our first step?”

Shawn jerks around in his seat, away from the pitbull he’s been staring at.

“You’re asking me?”

“Uh—” Carlton practically has a conniption right there in the driver’s seat. “You said you’d be my resources!”

“Yeah, Lassie, but I didn’t think you had _no_ clue where to start... Dude, you’re the head detective — and also, he’s _your_ dad—”

“That doesn’t mean I have access to details about this case! And _you’re_ supposed to be the — ” He stops himself before he can say the P-word and takes a deep breath. “I have approximately five years’ worth of memories of him, _tops_ , okay? Just—please tell me I didn’t waste my afternoon on a lapse of judgment....”

If it were Shawn and his own dad, a few memories from a very young age could be vivid and easily very useful. But, as he has to remind himself, most people don’t have an eidetic memory. Which is a part of him that has to stay secret for now.

He has to wonder if what Lassiter just told him was meant to stay a secret. And very quickly he has to make himself _stop_ wondering because he knows if he gets back into that, he’ll probably blurt out a question that brings up some bad shit for Lassie, and... he can offer him the courtesy of ignoring it, at least.

So he straightens up and tries very hard not to get distracted by that pitbull again.

“Lassie, I promise you did not. You printed out his police file, right?”

“It’s not much more than what I didn’t know already, but... yeah, you’re sitting on it.”

“Oh, huh.” Shawn pulls the slightly bent papers out from under his ass and starts flipping them over.

From Carlton’s peripheral vision, he can see Spencer give no more than five seconds of attention to the files before slapping them back down on his lap and saying,

“Got it! You’re gonna want to find East North Avenue.... Kind of a weird way to name a street, isn’t it? I mean, if you’re gonna name a street after a direction, splitting it up between _more_ directions seems pretty redundant—”

“What’s on East North Avenue?”

“ _Vivienne’s_ ,” Shawn purposely over-enunciates. The place—”

“The restaurant my dad worked valet for,” he remembers aloud. God, it seems so obvious, now, to just re-trace his dad’s footsteps.... He must have just been too distracted by stress to realize it earlier. “You really think we’ll get something out of it that the Lompoc police couldn’t?”

“How long have you known me, Lassie? Doing what the police can’t is my _specialty_.”

Carlton won’t say so, but he can’t argue with that.

 

***

 

As they talk about the plan, it’s pretty damn hard not to think of the time that, just about a year ago, that guy working as a valet managed to steal Lassiter’s car right out of the SBPD parking lot.

Nevermind the whole, far more convoluted scheme that that was a part of, it’s humiliating for Carlton to remember, and it physically twists his stomach. Luckily Spencer doesn’t bring it up.

He does, however, try to convince him to actually go in and get lunch.

“To make our undercover story convincing! And also for Lassie II down here, who is growling up a storm and just becoming relentless. _Feed me, Seymour!_ ” he adds in a ridiculous low voice, shaking his stomach as though it’s doing the talking.

Mixed feelings about that reference aside, Vivienne’s is simply too high-end of a place for him to reasonably afford one meal, let alone two. That, and he refuses to trust his car in the hands of valets ever again.

“Have the clark bar in my glove box if you’re that starving, Spencer,” he tells him, and then parks down the road from the place and immediately gets out, _officially_ stepping foot in Lompoc. It feels good, even though they haven’t gotten anywhere yet.

Meanwhile Shawn pouts, but he does take the clark bar.

So no real undercover, yet. Shawn can deal with that—he rarely attempts to hide that he’s a detective in most cases, anyway, unless he’s dealing with a dangerous crowd. Fancy restaurant valets? Shouldn’t be a problem.

“Excuse me!” Carlton shouts the moment they make it to the Vivienne’s entrance and spot a pair of men in maroon vests—

And Shawn sees them get startled, likely due to Lassiter’s demeanor. He panics a little and rushes ahead of Lassiter, grabs his arm to say that _I got this,_ and says,

“Hi! Hey—uh, you may be confused, because you don’t know us, and we are not customers of this fine establishment, but I hope that you two can help us. I am Shawn Spencer, psychic detective, and this—” He glances to Lassiter, who seems a little on edge, and quickly draws up something. “—is my partner, Noah the Eld _est_.”

“We’re working privately to investigate the possible whereabouts of Carlton Lassiter,” Carlton tells them before Spencer can potentially ruin this. God, that felt weird to say, though.

The valets quickly go from wary frowns to dawning looks of understanding.

“Oh, Carl! Yeah, the cops already came by and questioned all of us, you know,” one of them says. Shawn takes a split second to read his nametag.

“Joaquin, we operate on a different level than the police—”

“And I _did_ just say we’re working privately.”

“But more importantly, we’re working _psychically_ . Whatever the _cops_ gleaned from hours of questioning, here, Noah and I will take maybe twenty, thirty minutes of simply feeling energies. Plus a few basic questions to get it flowing, as... one always does.”

Carlton struggles to appear agreeable to this, or to even keep a straight face. He really doesn’t know why this is even necessary.

The valet who isn’t Joaquin lets out a laugh. “My grandma used to do that stuff.... She had prophetic dreams, and I swear, some of the weirdest, specific stuff came true. So—you can do that and figure out where Carl took the car and the money?”

“I sure hope so, Nick.” He’s only reading their name tags, but it still gets a reaction. “If you and your valet buddies wouldn’t mind letting us see around the workspace?”

“Don’t see why not—we’ll introduce you, come on.”

Shawn throws him a smirk as they follow, and Carlton is pleasantly surprised with how smoothly this has gone so far—

Though it seems, _just_ as he has that thought, he hears Nick ask Joaquin if it’s “just me, or does that Noah Eldest guy look a helluva lot like Carl?”

And Joaquin assuring Nick that it’s _definitely_ not just him.

At least they’re clearly high enough to believe it’s a coincidence.

 

*

 

They’d both been slightly suspicious, of course, as to why the valets were so ready to help them find Lassiter’s dad. Apparently they all _hated_ the guy.

“Carl was late half the time, and fuckin’ _begged_ us to cover his shifts the other half,” one tells them. “Probably the only reason he never got fired was because none of us complained to management.”

“Well, why didn’t you?” Carlton asks.

All of the available valets in the break area seem to share a look for a moment, and then the same one speaks up:

“Because we’re not _snitches_ . Not for petty shit, at least. Even if Carl _was_ annoying enough that it got tempting....”

“Like we told the cops when they came around,” another starts, “this whole car theft and robbery thing didn’t exactly come as a surprise. Carl was anxious like all the time and constantly trying to borrow money.... It was _pretty_ obvious he had a gambling problem. Like, dude couldn’t even be subtle about it. I’m just surprised he actually had it in him to shoot a _gun_ , like—”

He and several other valets start laughing like this has been a running joke between them. Shawn and Carlton share a look at the gambling comment, but then the latter frowns and thinks to ask,

“You know he’s an ex-con, right?”

“Well, _yeah_ — so are nearly all of us,” an older guy says, still laughing a bit. “Not many places hire you after you’ve been to prison. But hell, half of us only went for weed, which you _know_ means we went for being black. George over there went for tax evasion. None of us knew what Carl went for, but we didn’t think he’d have something like _that_ in him....”

Something starts turning in Shawn’s brain, at that, but he isn’t sure _what_ yet. He decides to shelf it for now and casually walks inside the garage-type room they’re all outside of.

“ _This_ is where Carl would’ve spent a lot of his time, correct?” he asks, making fluid motions with his arms like he’s ‘sensing’ the ‘energy.’ Gotta be convincing.

“Yep,” a few of the valets say disjointedly.

“And—” Shawn takes a quick glance around all the lockers, and spots the one that doesn’t have a padlock on it. “His locker was number 14, right?”

“Woah— _yeah_ ,” that older guy says.

“You really are psychic!” another shouts. “That’s sick, man.”

Carlton rolls his eyes, though he knows that there’s a decent chance Spencer _will_ glean something in there. He’s just annoyed that guessing a _number_ is all it takes for these people... And while their attention is away from him, he shifts impatiently and sighs.

“So none of you know anything about his personal life?” he asks loudly, getting some of the eyes back on him. “Where he spent time outside of work—maybe where he gambled? Whomever he owed that gambling debt _to_?”

“Man, trust me, if we knew, we’d have told you guys already,” Joaquin tells him, having just re-joined the fray with Nick. A different pair of valets leave in their place. “Carl didn’t try to tell us personal stuff.”

“And even if he did,” Nick adds, “we would’ve been avoiding him! He was only here for a month, anyway.”

Finding out how universally disliked his father is would be a lot more fun if it could _also_ give them actual information in the meantime. Frustrated, Carlton glances to where Spencer is messing with the lockers—and one of the valets seem to notice.

“Hey Noah—why aren’t you in there with him? To, uh, do whatever psychic thing he’s doing?”

For a split second he’s completely _baffled_ as to what that question means, and then he remembers what role he’s supposed to be in, here.

“Oh, I—I’m not a psychic,” he blurts out, which he never imagined he’d ever have to say. “He just, uh... keeps me around. For my investigative and pursuit-driving ability.”

“Don’t forget the sternbush!” Shawn yells from the garage without looking up. (He doesn’t _need_ to look up to know that Lassie’s ears are going pink.) “Honestly, guys, it’s about seventy-percent the sternbush.”

While most of the valets’ attentions are now inevitably on Lassiter’s glorious chest hair, Shawn continues his sweep through _Carl’s_ locker. As he expected, it’s mostly just trash. Any actual belongings would have been taken by the police as evidence, of course—but as they say, one man’s trash is another man’s evidence.

...Yeah, he’s not getting anything from this trash. There are no matchbooks with a local business’s logo conveniently on it, or any napkins with hastily scrawled phone numbers or cryptic messages or lipstick stains. Really, aside from a few name-brand food wrappers, it’s all bar napkins with _regular_ stains. And peanut shells.

On a resigned _it-can’t-hurt_ sort of whim, Shawn grabs one of the napkins and shoves it in his pocket. Maybe he’ll get an epiphany from it later.

Then Carlton hears the locker slam shut, and sees the disappointed pout on Spencer’s face as he walks out. _Dammit._

“Well, unfortunately, the peanut shells wouldn’t speak to me,” he announces. “Must be due to the Walnut Incident of ‘02.... You know, I really thought we were on good terms these days, but I guess those bastards never forget a grudge.” That gets him confused looks all around, but he expected as much. “...However, Noah, I _do_ know where we’re going next.”

Shawn proceeds to thank the valets for the help, and gives several of them elaborate high-fives while Lassiter waits awkwardly to the side.

Then, once they’re both turned away for good and briskly walking back to the car, Carlton takes a deep breath and starts airing out his windbreaker. The sun’s really beating down and a lot of things weigh on his mind, but oddly the thing at the very front is—

“Hey, what was the deal with that ‘ _Noah the Eldest_ ’ thing?”

Shawn takes a second to look up at him due to the sun shining painfully in his eyes, and then laughs, partially because he’d honestly forgotten about it.

“Happy Feet, man! You know, the old, scraggly penguin, who claims to hate dancing and fiercely sticks to tradition—until the end, of course, where it turns out that somehow he had mad dancing skills all along. You know.”

No, he doesn’t know. Because he doesn’t watch children’s films. But he still feels like he should be offended... maybe?

They climb back into the car a minute or so later, and he immediately tells him,

“Spencer, if you’re going to treat me like you treat Guster on cases, at least let me have a respectable alias. It’s bad enough I have to pretend to _not_ be a real detective.... Hey, where is Guster for all this, anyway?” he suddenly thinks to ask. “You clowns are usually inseparable.”

Shawn scoffs. “Clowns? Really? Have you ever _seen_ a clown, Lassie? They are absolutely terrifying and I will not _stand_ for this kind of slander. Neither I nor Gus have _ever_ shown up in a child’s nightmares... well, Gus definitely hasn’t. If anything, we’re more like court jesters.”

“You realize you literally just called yourself a fool,” he deadpans, amused.

“Fair enough.” Shawn nods in agreement and starts tugging his seatbelt down. “...Anyway, I _tried_ to get Gus on the case, but he opted out in favor of something weird called ‘getting paid’ at his supposed ‘real job’ or... something boring like that.”

“Uh huh.”

At the same time that Carlton sees a manchild who prioritizes fun over financial stability, his heart skips a beat. Then he panics and averts his eyes.

“But, now that I think about it,” Shawn continues, looking back over at him, “if he _was_ here, one or both of us would be sitting in the back of the car, and this whole thing would be thrown out of whack. It would be like making a buddy cop film with three cops!”

Somehow they’re both aware that that part was mostly for Shawn’s own benefit. Still, Carlton sighs.

“Not that I’m asking you to drag Guster away from his income and into this, but this is real life, Spencer. Not a movie. And even if it was... it would _obviously_ be a manhunt film, not a buddy comedy. Comedic _elements_ are present, sure, but ideally this’ll be more like... a watered-down version of Heat meets Catch Me If You Can.”

Surprisingly, Spencer doesn’t immediately quip back, or even a few seconds later. Vaguely concerned, Carlton looks to the passenger’s seat again—and sees Spencer beaming, with unmistakable pride.

It very nearly escapes him that he should maybe, uh, start the goddamn engine.

 

***

 

With no other concrete information to go on quite yet, they continue retracing Lassiter Sr.’s footsteps. In this case, wheelsteps. And obviously, very soon after stealing the car right out of the Vivienne’s parking lot, he drove it to the Chavero gas station that he proceeded to rob.

Though Shawn is honestly surprised that the place is open when a man was killed there only a week ago. Meanwhile Carlton knows, and tells him, that that’s just how business is. No property was damaged, after all.

“You know, Lass, I just _don’t_ get why people say you’re insensitive.”

“And you’re going to be super respectful, I’m sure, while you flail around in there trying to talk to the murder victim’s _ghost_.”

“Don’t be _silly_ , Lassie—people only stick around as ghosts when they have some unfinished business! And I’m almost certain that Patrick has moved on entirely into the next life.”

Suddenly very unsure about this, Carlton stops just feet away from the gas station’s doors and glares.

Shawn sighs, but understands the apprehension. “Okay—I swear on Gus’s life, no flailing. We’re going in as semi-regular people this time.”

Then he grabs Lassiter by the upper arm and yanks him in.

 _Semi-regular people_ , of course, means they’re customers. Shawn heads straight to the chip aisle, while Carlton pauses to look around the place. They seem to be the only customers in here, in fact, and the only employee in sight is currently dealing with the slushie machine.

It’s weird, standing here, knowing that his estranged father stood here just about a week ago and killed a man. It’s especially weird that he has to be a _civilian_ in this situation, that he isn’t a cop surveying the crime scene, that there isn’t even any physical evidence of the robbery.... But the A/C is pretty refreshing and he’d say it evens things out.

To avoid looking suspicious, he follows Spencer down the aisle. The guy has a bag of cheetos and some red vines in one arm and seems to be focusing very intensely on a wall of chocolate bars... for a solid minute.

“Is the ‘energy’ from the Hershey's going to tell you where my dad went?” Carlton asks eventually, arms folded and eyebrows raised impatiently.

Shawn takes that as a sign and promptly grabs the king sized Hershey’s bar from the shelf.

“No, but the sodas might,” he says, and watches Lassiter’s annoyance sink into a full-on scowl. “I have to check all the major food groups to be safe.... That’s _crunch_ , chocolate, fruit, beverage, and—the secret fifth group—umami.”

“That’s not even—” Carlton wipes a hand over his face and tries to breathe. “Whatever, Spencer, just—please tell me you’re not just here to shop.”

God, the poor guy looks helpless. Shawn almost feels bad.

“What do you take me for? I can investigate _and_ be in desperate need of snacks at the same time, Lassie. It’s called multitasking—maybe you should try it.”

He then grabs an Arizona Iced Tea out of the fridge he has open and hands it to him, and gets a coke for himself. And walks into the next aisle.

All Shawn has gotten from his several minutes of picking out snacks, truly, is that there aren’t any security cameras in this gas station. But they already knew that. But it’s still strange to him, and it must mean that this Chavero probably isn’t doing well financially... which he also knows, now, from their lack of quality meat snacks. _Goddamn._

While Carlton waits for him to get over his indecisiveness and just _get what he’s going to get_ , he grabs a Slim Jim for himself along with the tea Spencer picked. Figures he might as well (and tries not to think about the fact that Spencer knows what he likes to drink).

Finally, _finally_ , it seems like he’s done, and Carlton can go to the counter and set his stuff down and now hopefully get something out of the cashier.

And then Shawn stands right next to him and sets his armful of junk down, too. Carlton’s head whips over immediately.

“You’re out of your mind if you expect me to pay for all that, Spencer.”

“Does that mean you’ll pay for _some_ of it?” ...Lassiter’s glare doesn’t bode well for him. He pulls out his wallet and grimaces when he sees the inside. “Uh... I can chip in five dollars.”

“ _Chip_ — _?_ ” Carlton briefly blacks out and has to re-orient himself. “They’re _your_ snacks! And they’re not even what we’re here—”

Just then, the one employee in this place finally leaves the slushie machine and comes around the counter, so Carlton stops and tries to appear civil. But when he looks back to the guy, he’s just staring—wide-eyed, frozen in place, almost certainly fearful, at _him_.

For a few seconds they’re all frozen and staring and very confused, and then the cashier relaxes.

“I—Sorry, man, for a second I thought you were the guy who robbed us last week,” he says with a breathless, nervous sort of laugh. “I mean, he was wearing a mask at the time, but his picture’s on the news and, uh...” He trails off, likely intimidated by the scowl Lassiter once again has. He’s young and anxious and it really shows. “Sorry, it was just... a really terrifying experience.”

“Hold on—” Shawn says before Lassiter can (because he can tell the guy really wants to say _something_ that won’t be good). “You were there, but you’re already back to work?”

The cashier—whose nametag reads _E.J._ , he now sees—simply shrugs. “I can’t get compensation if I wasn’t hurt, and I need money, bro.”

Shawn nods sympathetically. “True, true... But, uh—yeah, I _promise_ you this guy isn’t the robber, even if he does look like he could be his son or something—”

Carlton kicks him in the shin, and at the same time E.J. says,

“ _Oh_ — no, yeah, I know he can’t be _now_ — the guy who robbed us had a massive scar on one hand, and the picture on the news was _definitely_ older now that I’m remembering it....” He seems to chance a look at Lassiter one more time before finally starting to ring things up. “Fuck, uh, I’m real sorry about that again, man.”

“A scar, huh?” Shawn says conversationally, tilting his head over to throw Lassiter a semi-excited look. He just barely returns it.

He also doesn’t respond to the apology, or otherwise say anything while E.J. is ringing up their collective snacks—and when the guy asks if that’ll be it for today, he doesn’t demand that Shawn give him that $5 or anything of the sort. Hell, he looks like he was zoning out for the first time Shawn’s ever seen.

“Um—” Carlton pauses, takes a deep breath, and shakes his head a bit to himself as he takes $30 out of his wallet and tosses it down. “Put fifteen dollars on pump 2. Spencer, grab the change for me—I’ll be in the car.”

Shawn watches him practically storm out of the gas station with utter confusion, and with some stab of concern if only for how Lassiter’s voice sounded. So much so that he almost forgets to be glad that he’s _actually_ getting free snacks.

After a moment, he shoves that mixed bag of feelings away and turns back to the cashier, who’s punching in numbers.

“Ooh—hey, E.J., was that _your_ statement on the news about the robbery?” he asks, trying to sound casual. “About how the robber shot that other dude for seemingly no reason? ’Cause that’s fucking wild, man—oh, shit, sorry, I... didn’t mean to bring up traumatic memories or anything, I—”

“Nah, it’s okay... I think I really offended your friend anyway,” E.J. sighs, and continues just like Shawn hoped he would: “But yeah. It was crazy, like, the guy says to open the register, and Pat’s reaction time isn’t _less than five fucking seconds_ , so he gets fucking shot. Like it was just for the hell of it or something. Makes me wonder why he didn’t just shoot me too, you know?”

The guy doesn’t seem as shaken up about it as Shawn would imagine, but he figures it could easily be shock or some other coping mechanism. And there isn’t much else he could possibly ask him, anyway, even if he did decide to bring up that he’s actually a psychic detective. After all, there’s no security footage.

So he just tries to look sympathetic again, and says, “Yeah, that’s heavy, man.”

E.J. tells him the new total with Lassiter’s gas money and starts to collect change, but Shawn acts on a whim and grabs one of those $1 cookies from the side of the counter.

“Wait—also this.”

 

*

 

Carlton watches Spencer finally walk out with two bags, one drastically more full than the other, but can’t bring himself to care about the money he just spent on him.

“Well?” he asks, as Shawn walks around the front of the car and hands the smaller bag to him.

“The change came out to less than a dollar,” Shawn tells him, pulling it out of his pocket. “Do you still want it?”

“Do you have _any_ idea where we’re going next, Spencer?”

He takes that as a no and drops the change back in, and feels that utter confusion from a few minutes ago bubble up again.

“Do _I_ have any idea? You barely said a word in there, and for once I wasn’t even hogging all the dialogue!”

“ _Dialogue?_ ” Carlton’s eyes widen, and he wants to laugh. “God dammit, this _isn’t_ a goddamn movie — in fact, what this is, Spencer, is a waste of time. I can’t believe it took me this long to realize it — I can’t believe I let you convince me to come all the way up here, out of my jurisdiction and hardly even undercover, where I have no choice but to follow _you_ around... And for what? _Do_ you actually have any idea where to go just from standing inside the gas station for ten minutes?”

Shawn winces and hesitates. “Well... not—”

“Figured,” Carlton practically snarls.

He turns around in favor of watching the gas volume go up on the pump’s screen, and somehow, that’s where Shawn really starts to feel a little heartbroken.

“...So I don’t have a specific place yet,” he starts, “but we still have _something to go on_ , Lassie! Didn’t you hear the cashier? Your dad has a pretty identifiable scar on his hand now, _and_ we know he probably needed the money from the robbery to pay someone off.”

“And you think the local police don’t have that information, too, Spencer?” _You think that I haven’t been thinking about that this whole time?_ “Contrary to what you may think, real cops actually _do_ manage to solve things on their own, sometimes. Hell, we have no clue how far they’ve actually gotten — for all we know, this case could be five minutes from being wrapped up on their end! Meanwhile all _we’ve_ done here is establish how much I apparently resemble my stupid dad.”

With that, he returns the gas hose to the pump, jerks open the car door with no regard for how painfully hot the outside of it is, and gets in. God, he feels like he’s boiling, and not in a way that the A/C can fix.

Shawn takes a minute to follow, as he’s frozen in place for a moment by secondhand grief. And when he does get to the door, the handle feels like a literal frying pan.

But eventually he sits down, and he makes a real effort to come across as sympathetic, partially because he really does understand.

“...Lassie—”

“As much as I’d love to personally be the one to slap the cuffs on my dad, Spencer...” Carlton finally decides to man up and meet his eyes again as he cuts him so painfully short. “This is stupid. Let’s stop while we’ve only wasted half the day and just leave it to the Lompoc police.”

“Come on, after three years, you should know that ‘leaving it to the police’ really isn’t my style.”

“Well, if _you_ want to hang around and ask shady bartenders whether or not they house bookies, or whether or not they’ve seen _a guy with a scar on his hand_ , be my guest. But I’m going back to Santa Barbara.”

It does sound a little ridiculous when Lassiter says it like that, but Shawn is the King of Ridiculous, and he refuses to give up. Partially because he’d have a lot of dignity to lose to Gus, and partially because spending an hour alone in a car with Lassie right now seems like a bad idea for both of them. But mostly because, even if the guy he was helping in the first place is clocking out, he still wants to do this for him.

“Fine,” he says, resigned, and gets right back out of the car.

And then he realizes, the moment he steps out, that he left his snacks in there. He’s only a little embarrassed as he reaches in through the open window, and as Lassiter rolls his eyes and hands the bag to him.

Carlton doesn’t really know how to feel. He doesn’t even know whether or not he’s surprised that Spencer is choosing to stay in Lompoc without him. But he can tell, without either of them saying another word, that they’re both at least a little bit sad.

Before he drives away, Shawn gives him a small wave and a look that he means to convey,

_“I’ll call you if I get a real lead.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> homopoe on tumblr drew **[this really cute art](https://homopoe.tumblr.com/post/164551191161/i-was-reading-bassiter-s-new-casefic-and-i-needed)** of lassiter from the beginning of this chapter :)


	4. a little tiny baby favor

The first order of business is to find a shady spot to sit and consume most of his snacks in one sitting, lest they melt in this godforsaken heat and go to waste. The second order is to bottle up all worries that he may not have thought this through. 

Unsurprisingly, that bottle doesn’t take very long to burst. 

Shawn can’t honestly say that he wishes he’d stayed in Lassiter’s car and endured an hour of arguing (or worse, awkward silence) all the way back to Santa Barbara, but after an hour of wandering around downtown Lompoc, instead, with admittedly almost  _ nothing _ to actually go on... he thinks he’s ready to clock out, too.

After his third and fourth orders of business (finding a bathroom and petting a dog), he opens up his wallet again and remembers that he has $5 to his name. Now, he _ could _ spend that on a bus ticket home...

...Or he could keep his money and just call a trusted friend, family member, or colleague to come pick him up, like he always does. Might as well stick with continuity.

Shawn plants his ass on a park bench and pulls out his phone, which thankfully still has about half battery left. His first instinct is to call Gus, of course, but if memory serves he should be at work about now... which has never exactly stopped him  _ before _ , but this entire case is a sort of special circumstance. He’d have a lot of dignity to lose, there.

It bums him out, but Gus is kinda out of the question as a lifeline right now. He honestly thinks he’d rather spend his $5 on that bus.

Then without thinking, he scrolls down to Lassiter’s contact. For a moment or two he considers it, not necessarily because he’s changed his mind about wanting to be in a car with him right now, but because he just wants to know whether or not Lassie would do it. And then he very quickly decides he’d rather not even know the answer.

That leaves one available person — who is normally his last resort, as reliable as he is. Shawn’s been vaguely aware he would need his help at  _ some _ point during this case, anyway. Now seems like that point.

Forcing his own reluctant hand, he scrolls back up the contact list and presses the call button.

Only two rings before it picks up. That’s a good sign.

“Hey, Pops... you still have a couple friends up in the Lompoc Police Department, right? ...In related news, I’m currently stranded in Lompoc.”

 

*

 

About an hour and a half later, Henry Spencer finds his son lying across a park bench on his back, sweat visibly pooled on the front of his t-shirt, playing some kind of rhythm game on his phone. For a guy who’s been “dying” in the heat for this long, he sure does take his sweet-ass time sitting up and getting in the truck.

Though it’s not too different in the truck, either.

“Jesus, Dad, are you baking something in here? Is a good ol’-fashioned oven not good enough for you?”

“The truck’s A/C is broken,” Henry tells him, “and for that reason you  _ seriously _ owe me for driving all the way up here, Shawn. You know what, you never even told me why you’re in Lompoc in the first place.”

Shawn holds his breath for a second, then figures he might as well put it out there.

“...You know that robbery and murder that happened a week ago?”

“Yeah, I heard about it, but how the hell are  _ you _ involved? It’s — _ oh _ . This has something to do with Lassiter, doesn’t it? I  _ thought _ that guy looked a helluva lot like him.... Well, this just proves that nothing really ever is a coincidence. Lemme guess, it’s about Lassiter’s dad?”

It isn’t that Shawn didn’t  _ expect _ Henry to catch on without too many hints, but knowing that his father was able to connect him to Lassiter that quickly... brings up a lot of questions. And weird feelings in his stomach-area.

“Well, at least now I don’t have to feel bad about letting you in on it,” he sighs.

“So — what, Lassiter abandoned you up here or something?” his dad laughs.

“Not... exactly.”

He then tries to explain, with as minimal detail as possible while retaining  _ some _ nuance, the situation that led up to him being here without a ride home. Henry still takes it at face value (or unempathetic dad value) and suggests that he leave it alone, says that he’s too emotionally involved in this anyway —

“So is Lassie! Listen, maybe you don’t think this is a good idea in your  _ wizened, retired detective’s _ opinion, but I know for a fact that he doesn’t want to leave this alone, either. He just doesn’t know how to move forward.”

He half-expects Henry to rant right back at him, but instead the man silently regards him with a frown for a few seconds.

“...You know that for a  _ fact _ , do you?”

_ God, he better not start. _ “Yes, Dad, I do.”

“But you don’t know how to move forward, either.”

“I... do not. But I  _ might _ ... if you do me a little, tiny, baby favor.”

 

*

 

Shawn has to promise to go fishing with him every weekend for the next month (and specifically to  _ stay quiet _ for the entire duration of each fishing trip) in order to get Henry to agree to this. 

But of course, that’s just out of the man’s spite, and not because what Shawn has in mind is difficult in the least. The moment he makes the promise (which he’s pretty sure he won’t even keep), in fact, his dad seems to immediately shift the gear in his demeanor. He drives to the Lompoc Police Station with a weird amount of ease and almost looks  _ excited _ to be here when he gets out of the truck.

“Haven’t actually come around here since I was still on the force,” Henry mutters, looking around as they walk up the stairs. “God, it’s changed a lot.”

“Yeah, well, you know.” Shawn gives his dad an odd look and follows close behind. “That’s kinda how the passage of time works.”

They push past the glass doors and reach the receptionist’s desk, and instead of reacting to what his son just said, Henry puts on an  _ unnervingly _ friendly persona and a wide grin.

“Kim! You’re still working reception in this place?”

“Oh my god, Henry  _ Spencer _ ? Well, how the hell’ve you been! And what brings you up here — oh, and who’s this with you?”

Shawn suddenly has an arm around his neck, jerking him closer to his dad and into the view of a very tall, middle-aged woman. Oh no, not  _ this _ .

“Oh — this is my son, Shawn. I don’t think you’ve ever met him, but, uh, you might’ve heard about his psychic detective business down in Santa Barbara....”

Judging by the look on her face, she hasn’t heard of him already, which in this case is a bit of a relief. Shawn smiles politely and reaches out to shake her hand.

“I loved you in Coraline. Gave me nightmares for a month!”

“What — ?”

“Don’t worry, Kim, he’s joking. No one ever really knows about  _ what _ , but... anyway! We were just passing through and I realized how long it’s been since I’ve seen any of the guys who transferred back in the day.... You think Shawn and I could come in for a quick visit?”

“Well, I don’t see why  _ not _ ,” she says enthusiastically, and quickly sits back down to print them some visitors’ badges.

Damn, that was quick. And at the same time mildly uncomfortable, seeing his dad be so sociable. Shawn takes the first possible chance to smack him on the arm and aggressively whisper,  _ who are you and what have you done with Henry Spencer, but also, wherever he is, please just leave him there _ .

“What, you expected me to shimmy my way in here by acting like a grumpy old man?” he mutters back.

“I don’t know,  _ maybe _ ! Are you telling me the way you act around me is just a persona? How many do you have, exactly? Which one of them is the  _ real _ Henry — ”

At the same time as he says that, he hears another man shouting his father’s name across a long room of police desks. That man comes into view quickly, looking about his father’s age and similarly excited to Kim from a few minutes ago. Shawn braces himself for the social impact.

“Rodney!” his dad shouts back, meeting the man in a very brief, rough hug. 

Shawn steps to the side and watches them get into one of those old-men-catching-up conversations — a lot of inside jokes that must have been going for over a decade, some of which are a little offensive but were probably socially acceptable “back in their day,” marveling over how long it’s been since they’ve seen each other in person, generic questions about what’s been going on with their families in the meantime, and, finally,

“You remember Shawn, right?”

“Shawn? You mean the eight-year-old who looked me straight in the eye and told me why my marriage was failing? Course I remember him! — Damn, you got big, didn’t you?”

“Once again, that  _ is _ how the passage of time works,” Shawn confirms.

“Not  _ that  _ big, really,” Henry laughs. 

“Dad, I’m literally above average height — ”

“You  _ were _ right about the marriage, though,” Rodney says, clapping him on the shoulder like  _ they’re _ old friends. “I heard you’re in the detective business, now, too — glad to see you’re following in your old man’s footsteps!”

“Well... kind of,” Shawn says. He’d rather not describe his job that way. “I work a lot more loosely, really. Private cases, supernatural goings-on, other seemingly unexplainable phenomena... And when the SBPD’s finest are absolutely  _ stumped _ , which is relatively often, I’m the guy they hit up for a consultation.”

“Ha, I did hear it was a  _ psychic _ detective sort of business... Wish we had one of those, especially right now....”

Rodney gives an exasperated sort of sigh, and Shawn feels a lightbulb turn on. He immediately puts two fingers to his temple.

“Are you, by chance... having trouble  _ finding _ someone — someone who’s on the run?”

Now he looks mildly surprised and impressed. “Actually, we are. You heard about the gas station robbery?”

“Yes, but not conventionally,” Shawn says, putting on his Psychic Voice. “A lot of negative energy is concentrated on East North Avenue... and  _ not _ just because of the redundant name.”

“Yeah, well... I suppose this isn’t exactly a secret — we’re pretty much at a standstill in chasing down Lassiter. Until someone spots him, or a bookie decides to come forward... Unless you got anything? You know — I mean... psychically or something?”

Shawn tries very hard to hide his excitement and acts, for a few seconds, like he’s trying to focus on something that isn’t there.

“...Sorry, nothing seems to be biting. Speaking of which, Dad — we should probably start heading back to Santa Barbara and prep for that, uh, fishing trip we were talking about.”

Of course, Henry has to spend several more minutes caught in conversation with Rodney anyway. Shawn zones out and feels like he’s twelve years old all over again, waiting for his dad to finally just finish talking to another friend’s dad about Dad Stuff so they can freaking  _ go _ already, even though his dad told  _ him _ to get ready to leave ten minutes ago.... And then, what feels like  _ years _ later, Shawn zones back in, now outside and halfway to the truck while his dad says,

“Well, I can’t say I see how that’s gonna help you move forward, Shawn, but a favor’s a favor and I  _ swear _ , if you try to skip out on fishing with me... I  _ will _ reverse the favor, somehow.”

Ah,  _ there’s _ the Henry he knows and... knows.

 

***

 

It’s only about 8PM by the time his dad drops him off at the Psych office, but it feels like much later. He supposes it’s just been a very long day with a lot of traveling and a lot of heat and emotions passing through his body... and not any Gus at all, which makes it a little surreal. 

Mostly just... a lot of questions without answers. Through the physical exhaustion Shawn has to remind himself that this case is still going, that he still wants to help Lassiter solve it. 

But that can’t happen until Lassiter agrees to re-join the investigation, and he won’t be able to convince him to do that without a new lead... which he’ll have to come up with on his own. This feels like one of those vicious cycles.

Shawn finds a juicebox in the office’s fridge, gets comfortable in the Big Chair, and turns on the TV for background noise while he tries to think. Okay. He now knows that the Lompoc police are, indeed, just as stuck as they are. Which is good news! Well, good news for Lassiter. Maybe not great news for the investigation as a whole. Maybe just neutral news.

Regardless, he doesn’t think approaching Lassiter with  _ just  _ that will do anything but frustrate him further.

Well,  _ fine _ , maybe... maybe they overlooked something. Something the cops overlooked, too. Maybe they need to look into the other connections to this case — the person the car was stolen from? The family of the victim? Those would only be relevant, though, if this was a deliberately and  _ personally _ planned crime. Which he sincerely doubts. 

There’s the apartment that Lassiter Sr. abandoned... which has surely been cleared out by now. But there’s also... his landlord? 

Of everything, that feels like their best possible bet for getting ideas of where Lassiter’s dad would have gone, or at least of where he does his gambling. 

Once he comes to that conclusion, Shawn looks at the clock. Have three whole hours really passed?

God, he hasn’t even been awake a full twelve hours but he’s so  _ tired _ . Gus would probably tell him that he’s dehydrated. But water sounds disgusting right now, and the fridge is all the way across the room. He’d have to get  _ up _ ....

By some miracle, however, instead of keeping him stuck in some unholy mixture of feeling wired and exhausted, his brain seems to actually be letting him drift to sleep. At least he has that.

 

*

 

Shawn opens his eyes, for the second day in a row, to Gus standing over him. This time, though, it seems he actually got... oh, wow, thirteen hours. Too bad he’s still tired.

_ And _ this time Gus is holding out a pineapple smoothie that he evidently picked up on his lunch break. The perfect wake-up drink.

“You know me so well,” Shawn says as he stretches and grabs it, promptly sucking down enough to get the dry feeling out of his mouth. 

While his mouth is still too full for him to speak, Gus asks, while taking the other chair,

“So, how was your buddy-cop day with Lassiter?”

“Mm — first of all, it was more of a manhunt day.” Shawn couldn’t be more grateful that Gus isn’t being standoffish about this, but he’s still reluctant to admit that, “Second of all... unlike this smoothie, it wasn’t too fruitful. But I do know that we’re no further from Dassiter — _ Dadditer? _ Oh, no, then that would make the shortened version ‘Daddy’ — ”

“Shawn.”

“Anyway, we’re no further from finding him than the Lompoc police are, after just one day, so! In my professional opinion, we’re doing fine. Ooh — _ and _ I got Lassie to buy me snacks and even let me have the change, so I think we might have actually entered the Best Possible Timeline....”

Shawn realizes that he slept in his jeans, and immediately shoves his non-smoothie-hand into his pockets to find the 80 cents to prove it, while Gus scoffs and says,

“So you got him to do what  _ I’m _ usually doing — ”

“Wait!”

While searching for the change, he pulls out the napkin he took from Lassiter Sr’s locker and is simultaneously hit with an idea.

“What?”

“Smell this real quick,” he says, leaning forward and pushing the napkin into Gus’s face. 

Gus covers his nose and mouth before it can get too close. “ _ Please _ tell me that’s not what I think it is, Shawn.”

“Jesus — of course not! It’s a bar napkin.”

He puts his hand down at that, clearly relieved (like he actually thought Shawn would put something so gross near him), but then hesitates and pulls his head back.

“Wait — is this a clue?”

“...Maybe?”

“It is! And you’re trying to  _ use _ me — ”

“We use the supersmeller on cases all the time!” Shawn whines.

“Yeah, when we’re both on a case that we’ll both be  _ paid _ for.” He tries to cover his face again, but Shawn practically shoves the stained side of the napkin into his nostrils first. “ _ Augh _ _ — _ I’m  _ not _ gonna — ”

Gus pauses and makes an intrigued face that lasts a split second. That’s long enough for Shawn.

“Ha! You just detected an uncommon scent, didn’t you?”

“No, I didn’t, it just smells like a typical bar!”

“Oh my god, are you really going to obstruct  _ justice _ just because you’re not getting paid? You can’t  _ un _ -smell it, Gus. It’s too late.”

“‘Obstruct justice?’ ...You sound like Lassiter.” 

Gus frowns. Shawn rolls his eyes.

“I’ll give you the eighty cents in my pocket if you tell me.”

“Done.” He holds out his hand, and as soon as the coins touch it, he says, “Old Bay Seasoning.”

“...The stuff they put in crab cakes?”

“A lot more than just crab cakes, but yeah.  _ Actually _ , that’s the funnier part — I’m not getting  _ any _ hint of shellfish.” 

“Not even regular fish?”

Gus smells it again, this time of his own volition, and makes a frustrated sort of expression. “Nope,  _ just _ the seasoning. I mean, also a bar smell. But the seasoning is really pungent. Maybe there’s some drink that uses it?”

“Yeah, a drink made specifically for one of those archetypal old sailors who warn you not to go out to sea, and who’ll tell anyone who will listen a story about how The Krakken took his eye, and only answers your questions with more questions....”

Whether it’s from a drink or some kind of bar snack, though, there can’t be many bars in Lompoc that use it. So that’s something.

That’s  _ definitely _ something.

 

***

 

It feels good, wearing a suit and tie again. 

Even though, really, dressing like a civilian and participating in some useless investigation only lasted for half a day. Somehow it just feels like that lasted much longer.

Regardless! Carlton is refreshed. He had his day off, and he  _ tried _ , and he had his moment of realization that there’s no  _ use _ in trying when it means worming his way into a case that he has no business in. He hasn’t gotten any calls or texts from Spencer in the meantime, either, so he can only assume the whole thing is over. It was just a one-day thing. They probably won’t ever openly acknowledge it again, like many other things between them.

He swears that it’s out of his mind.

Well, it might be if a  _ real _ case could just be dropped on his desk and effectively distract him. Or at least some goddamn field work.

“We had some field work the other day!” Juliet says when he vaguely brings it up. “We caught a vandal, remember?”

“Yes, and then I had a mandatory vacation day. That’s a whole day in-between!”

“From working so unnecessarily  _ hard _ .”

“Is  _ justice _ unnecessary, O’Hara?” he snaps, vaguely aware how much like a one-dimensional version of himself he sounds. “Maybe the law itself is unnecessary, and we should all wreak havoc and promote anarchy — ”

“ _ Carlton _ .” She sounds annoyed, which in turn annoys him. “...I don’t think you got enough rest on your day off.”

“Rest?” He fakes a gruff laugh. “I haven’t heard that name in  _ years _ .”

Juliet chuckles, but quickly stops herself and tells him, “Seriously. I can’t have my partner all erratic because he wants to be a child and refuse to ever take a break. Unless, maybe, there’s something more...  _ specific _ stressing you out, that you might want to — ?”

“Would you look at that, O’Hara — it’s the clock telling me it’s time to stop fooling around with you, and to get back to those reports.”

That was a close one. Carlton is  _ pretty _ sure that she doesn’t know how he feels about his father or anything that’s gone on regarding him, but he’d rather not take any chances and just get distracted further.

Just his luck, though, at about midday his personal phone rings. It’s Spencer.

He considers ignoring it, but only for a very short moment.

“What do you want?” he answers, his guard already up.

“I want a lot of things, Lassie,” Shawn says. “Namely a platonic date with Billy Zane. Or — no, it wouldn’t have to be platonic, the age difference isn’t  _ that _ weird.... But what I want isn’t important right now. What is important is what I’ve just had a  _ vision _ of, relating to a certain father of yours.”

Carlton knows that whatever it is, it’s definitely not a ‘vision,’ but... it’s almost certainly  _ something _ . He just doesn’t want to get his hopes up.

“...I’m listening.”

“I’ve seen a bloody mary. A very, very  _ spicy _ bloody mary. And I’m getting... Captain Ahab, I’m getting Sinbad, I’m getting  _ Gilligan _ , I’m — ”

“Famous sailors?”

“Yes! It’s a sailor’s drink, Lassie! But it’s not being  _ served _ to a sailor... except, perhaps, in the colloquial sense. Multiple times a week, the same man, the same bar, the same  _ table _ ... because it’s the only place he can get that drink. And, of course, because his bookie does business there.”

Carlton still doesn’t want to get his hopes up, but that’s becoming a lot more difficult. He unwittingly holds his breath.

“You sure about this, Spencer? You  _ promise _ this isn’t gonna waste my time.”

“Yes and yes,  _ and _ yes to your unspoken question of whether or not I know we’re ahead of the Lompoc police.”

He glances around quickly to make sure no one is watching his conversation. “...Gimme an estimate of how long it’s gonna take you to crack this.”

“Two, maybe three days  _ tops _ _ — _ is how long it’s gonna take  _ us _ to crack this, Lassie.”

He can hear the excited grin in Spencer’s voice, and god dammit, he can’t help but grin, too. He breathes again, and he can barely even remember the total resignation he felt about this whole thing just a few minutes ago.

“Alright, I’m back in,” Carlton says, nodding in anticipation even though Spencer can’t see him. “Just let me take care of a few things.”

 

*

 

In all 17 years of being on the force, Carlton has requested more than a single day of vacation time only once. It was for his wedding and honeymoon with Victoria, and even then it was months in advance. 

So the surprise — or... utter  _ shock _ on Chief Vick’s face is understandable.

“The day you had me take off yesterday just made me realize that I’ve really been burning the candle at both ends, lately,” he half-lies. “...And I was thinking that maybe it would be a good idea to have some time off for  _ real _ and... and go spend some time with my family.”

He hasn’t even intentionally spent time around his mother but for the holidays in over a decade, but Vick probably doesn’t know that. She seems impressed with him, really.

“Wow, Lassiter, that’s very... surprisingly emotionally mature of you. I’d honestly be  _ happy _ to give you some vacation days that you surely need — but you understand, of course, asking for the rest of the week off on such short notice — ”

“Absolutely, yes,” he says, nodding vigorously. “I have no major cases going and O’Hara has already agreed to take over my caseload in my absence.”

He did not, in fact, already discuss the situation with her. So the moment Chief Vick approves it, he rushes out of the office and right to Juliet’s desk, sucks up his pride, folds his hands, and gets ready to beg. 

“I’ll owe you,” he promises, before she can even react to his request. 

She gives him an indecipherable look — but only because of his own shortcomings in reading expressions. He thinks it’s  _ probably _ positive?

“...What happened to not knowing the meaning of the word ‘rest’?” she asks with a tilt of her head.

“I... picked up a dictionary?” She holds her gaze and says nothing. “Okay, fine. It’s... a family thing.”

He mumbles those last two words, but Juliet clearly heard them just fine because she _immediately_ agrees —reasonably, on the condition that he take _her_ caseload sometime in the near future that she chooses to take some days off. 

“ _ And _ ,” she adds, poking a surprisingly strong finger into his chest, “that you come back from this vacation feeling better than when you left.”

 

*

 

Carlton pulls up in front of Shawn’s apartment around 6PM, clad in the same jeans and jacket and amount of visible sternbush as yesterday. 

And Shawn, having changed into an old leather jacket that he hasn’t worn in  _ much _ too long, feels his heartbeat spike and his lips stretch into a too-wide grin even for  _ him _ as he rushes to open the passenger’s door and jump in.

Maybe it’s just that they now have a real, solid lead. Maybe it’s the excitement of seeing Lassiter show up in that outfit unprompted, or the relief of seeing Spencer actually be ready in a timely manner, or the seriousness in general of a case that requires overnight bags.... But for both of them, starting the drive is  _ so _ much more satisfying the second time.

It only helps that, about an hour ago, Shawn got another text from Juliet:

 

_ I KNOW you have something to do with this, and THANK YOU!!! pls tell me how it goes -J _


	5. my robbing, murdering dad

It’s called  _ Chesapeak’d _ , and it’s got to be  _ the _ most east coast-looking bar Shawn has ever seen on the west coast. And he’s been pretty much everywhere on the west coast.

“I think that’s probably the point of it,” Carlton mutters as they walk in, looking around at all the fishing-inspired decor. “Like those nostalgia bars that people go to to feel like they’re in the 50s... except to make people feel like they’re in a seaside Maryland town.”

They both see the appeal of it, they really do, but the premise of the bar seems like it was much better on paper. Despite the fishing nets draped across the walls, along with paintings of storms on the ocean and some realistic-looking crabs and barnacles, and even a few old-fashioned lanterns,  _ and _ despite the fact that they actually  _ are _ in a seaside town... it doesn’t quite hold the vibe of an old fisherman’s tavern. 

Really, it just seems kind of seedy and tacky. But maybe that’s more due to the people than the physical aesthetic, especially as Shawn notices absolutely  _ no _ archetypal old fishermen, or even anyone missing an eye or any limbs. 

“Then they’re totally missing their own point,” Shawn mutters back, incredibly disappointed.

Just walking in, there’s no way to know for certain that this is the place quite yet — and then as they each take a barstool, the man tending bar turns around and practically jumps. For a guy with one almost entirely burned arm and an equally menacing scar across his face (which eases up Shawn’s disappointment), he looked pretty damn spooked for half a second.

“Haven’t seen you guys in here before,” he says in an unsurprisingly gravelly voice, clearly trying to brush it off by pretending to clean an already-clean cup. “We don’t usually get new customers.... You sure you’re in the right place?”

Funnily enough, that’s  _ exactly _ what they just became sure of. Or very nearly sure. There’s just one thing —

“Are  _ you _ Mr. Chesapeake?” Shawn says, leaning over the bar before Carlton has the chance to ask a  _ real _ question. 

The bartender raises a scarred eyebrow. “I’m Ichabod. But yeah, I’m the owner, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“That’s close enough, and a pretty sick name — Ichabod, can you tell me  _ what _ exactly the name of this bar is supposed to mean?”

“...It’s a pun? On Chesapeake Bay?”

“I mean — yes, I get that, Ichabod, but it’s not really a pun  _ on _ anything, is it? It just kinda sounds like you’re trying to coin a new euphemism for ‘drunk’ and  _ honestly _ , don’t you think there’s enough of those already?”

Carlton may not be great at reading emotions, but he can tell from experience that the bartender is about halfway between just  _ baffled _ with Spencer and ready to throw him right out the door. So he cuts in by slapping a hand down.

“Don’t mind him — we’re bar-hopping and he’s already a little drunk....  _ Anyway _ , we’re here because I’ve heard you mix a pretty damn good,  _ spicy _ bloody mary that you just can’t get anywhere else.”

“Not many places on the west coast, at least,” the bartender quickly agrees with a smirk, which seals it. “Doesn’t seem like enough people appreciate a real intense ‘mary, either.”

“We’ll take two,” Shawn says, perking up. 

The moment Ichabod turns around to start on their drinks, he and Lassiter share a look and forget about his grievance with the bar’s name entirely.

In the meantime, Shawn uses their vantage point to try and pinpoint which of these bar-goers is the resident bookie. Without knowing the name, simply asking the bartender where they can place a bet would be pretty suspicious, and he simply can’t risk that.

He can rule out everyone else seated at the bar. Most of the patrons closer to the front, too. But there are at least three different men each seated at their own tables near the back who are obscured to some extent and could easily be the guy. 

If he could just see the vaguest corner of a notepad, or the shoulder-motions of writing something down... 

Or a scrawny, vaguely familiar man entering the building with an envelope in hand, passing the bar entirely, and sitting directly across from a woman with short, curly black hair and a sleeve of nautical tattoos.  _ Huh. _

Well, count Shawn as ashamed of himself for assuming the bookie would be a man, as well as  _ definitely _ no longer disappointed about this place.

“Hey — ” he whispers, and twists around to meet up directly with the other man’s gaze, as he’s already leaning towards him. “Oh. A little close there, Lassie.”

“You know who it is?” Carlton whispers back, hopeful, and unaware of the mini-heart attack he just gave him.

He can only assume that that’s what Spencer was trying to figure out, considering how intensely he seemed to be scanning the rest of the bar. Only a few times before has he actually gotten to see what Spencer  _ really _ does, underneath the psychic angle — no gibberish, no pseudo-spiritual talk, no obnoxious noises, not even a finger to the temple. Just sitting down and observing, and a rare minute of silence. And Carlton can’t help but feel a little awed.

But perhaps, unbeknownst to either of them, Carlton might have just as easily figured it out had he been watching more than just Shawn.

Just then, Ichabod slides two bloody marys in front of them, at which they panic and quickly sit up straight — and then internally panic a little more due to how suspicious that might have looked. But Ichabod merely smirks and steps away to the other patrons.

“...Uh, yeah.” Shawn blinks in silence a few times, feeling a little whiplashed. “Fourth from the back on the left. Looks like she could kill you and you’d thank her for it.”

Carlton notices her immediately and can agree  _ wholeheartedly _ with that sentiment. But she also has a customer at the moment, so they have no choice but to wait it out.

Shawn starts that wait by taking his first drink of the bloody mary — and oh,  _ Jesus, Bloody Mary, and Joseph _ , that is a flavor  _ seizure _ . He rarely drinks anything stronger than beer outside of special occasions or particularly depressive spells, so after just a few mouthfuls, the alcohol combined with the Old Bay is one  _ swift _ fucking kick.

And Ichabod apparently just  _ has _ to choose the moment that his eyes start watering to glance over at him. For one second, Shawn grins the best he can and gives a weak thumbs up. 

“Baby,” Carlton mutters, smugly sipping his own with ease, but also with an undeniably fond look on his face.

If Shawn wasn’t too busy trying to look like he’s enjoying the drink to respond, he would tell him that he has no shame in being a lightweight, and that drinking spicy, alcoholic tomatoes is a crime against nature _ anyway _ _ — _

And then Lassiter grabs his upper arm, distracting him from his own internal rant.

“Bookie’s table is free. Let’s go.”

He slaps down a twenty for the marys, knowing they won’t be racking up any more of a tab because getting legitimately drunk would be a  _ terrible _ idea right now, and tries to appear casual as he and Spencer cross the bar. 

Carlton also mentally prepares himself for it, but it doesn’t make the shock and familiarity on the woman’s face when they sit down sting much less.

She doesn’t jump, like the bartender did. But she does go wide-eyed and pale as though she’s seen a ghost and, like everyone else, clearly realizes after a moment that the man in front of her isn’t the man she thought he was. And then regains her badass composure.

And in that moment, Shawn gets comfortable in his spot closest to the wall and notices the subtle distress on Lassiter’s face. So he takes it upon himself to introduce the two of them before even the bookie herself can speak:

“I can see you’re probably pretty surprised to be getting brand new customers.... Uh, I’m Shawn, and he’s Thomas Highway. You, ah, might even say he’s a  _ heartbreaker _ .”

Upon hearing that, Carlton briefly forgets that he’s even supposed to be undercover and can’t help but whip his head over and smile, all his breath leaving him and with honest-to-god  _ hearts _ in his eyes —

And it doesn’t even really seem to matter, as the bookie raises an eyebrow and smirks like she doesn’t care whether he’s using an alias, and like she must know exactly what it’s referencing. Both Shawn  _ and _ Carlton suddenly like her even better, regardless of her career-crimes.

“Anyway, we’re bar-hopping,” Shawn continues, keeping up with that story that Lassiter gave to Ichabod. “You know — _ celebrating _ , so we’re drinking and the inhibitions are down, and I realized that I’ve always  _ wanted _ to place a real bet but just never had the guts to do it. So here we are!”

He grins and takes a (now more tolerable) gulp of that bloody mary in hopes of selling it. So far so good.

Though not entirely for Carlton, who  _ knew _ going in that they’d have to make an actual bet for the interaction to work, and that that bet would certainly have to come out of his own wallet... But that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it.

“You’re gonna owe me for this, by the way,” he tells Spencer, both as Highway and himself. And then realizes, “Hey, didn’t you say in the first place that you wanted this whole thing to make us even?”

“Yeah, but like in an immeasurable friendship-tokens kind of way, not a strict monetary — you know what, nevermind, I can’t do this with you right now.” Shawn turns back to the bookie, who looks more amused than anything. “So do you do like... horse races? Sports teams? WWE? Just pick two of the other guys in the bar and have them fight? If so, my money’s on Mr. Chesapeake up there in front.”

The bookie actually grins at that, and finally speaks — though with a much smoother tone than Shawn expected.

“You’d be right to bet on Ichabod — he’s the most ruthless guy I know. But he  _ does _ like to keep his business running without scaring away the patrons, so he will not, unfortunately, fight any of them without something called ‘good reason.’ Uh... other than that, fellas, I’m pretty diverse. If you want the quickest turnout, there’s a Padres-Tigers game tomorrow morning.”

Shawn looks to Lassiter. “What’d’ya think, Tom? Do we side with San Diego, or an actual good team?”

“...You know goddamn well I don’t follow sports, Shawn,” Carlton deadpans.

Now he doesn’t know whether to appreciate the sound of his first name or to be disappointed that Lassiter couldn’t just go along with the jab at the Padres. To compromise, he returns his attention to the bookie again.

“We’ll go with the Tigers,” he says.

“Alright — you should also know I don’t do small bets. Fifty dollars minimum.”

“Well, that’s not too bad. Tom, you got — ”

“ _ Yeah _ ,” Carlton sighs, wallet already in hand. He throws Spencer a look while he shells out the cash, and subsequently realizes that it’s about to be too late to get the ball rolling on this investigation. Luckily, the panic helps him do some quick thinking. “So, miss...?”

Her head shoots up from counting the bills. “ _ Don’t _ call me ‘miss.’ It’s Ruby.”

“Does  _ everyone _ in this bar have a cool name?” Shawn asks immediately. That seems to put her right back in a good mood.

“Clearly you haven’t met Irving,” she says, jerking a thumb to the old man apparently passed out in the back. Then she looks back to Lassiter, a new, intimidating glint in her eye. “So — what did you want, Heartbreaker?”

Well, that’s one quick flurry of mixed emotions if he ever had one. 

“I, uh...” God, he almost forgets what he meant to say. “Sorry, but is there someone I  _ look _ like or something? I’ve gotten startled looks from just about everyone in this bar who’s glanced in my direction, and normally I’m  _ glad _ to have an unapproachable demeanor... but this is getting a little weird.”

A+ to Lassie for the acting, Shawn thinks. He himself was having trouble coming up with a way to shift the conversation into that territory, and considering how unsuccessful the guy has been in undercover work in the past.... Shawn has to believe that his own quick and clever thinking must have rubbed off him.

Ruby doesn’t even seem put off by the question, as much as she was likely ready to be. Though she does hesitate to answer while she puts the money away and pulls out her books.

“...As a matter of fact, in the right lighting you happen to look damn near  _ identical _ to an ex-client of mine.”

“ _ Ex _ ?” Carlton and Shawn ask simultaneously.

“Yeah, Carl and I parted ways when he paid off his last debt with money he apparently robbed from that gas station, and then booked it.”

Carlton puts on the most genuine and nuanced look of surprise he can muster. “...Oh.”

“ _ That _ guy was your client?” Shawn says, leaning forward seemingly out of intrigue but, in actuality, to get a closer look at the numbers and names on those books.

“Not just any client, but a  _ regular _ ,” Ruby tells them. “The worst a regular can get, really....”

“Have the cops come and asked you about him?” Carlton asks.

“They haven’t — and I’d  _ prefer _ it that way.” She gives them both a brief, sharp look. “But if, ah, either of you happen to feel like tipping them off? Tell ‘em that Carl is almost  _ definitely _ in Santa Barbara. I might hate cops, but I hate that dumbass more for all the trouble he’s caused me, and shit — I’d just  _ love _ to see him get put away.”

Shawn refrains from giving Lassiter any kind of look, and instead aggressively knocks their knees together under the table. It’s mutual.

Struggling to remain casual and to come off as simply curious, Carlton asks, after a moment,

“How do you know he’s in Santa Barbara?”

“’Cause he talked about wanting to move back there once his debts were settled, like, all the time. Guess it’s his hometown or something. Of course, I mostly tuned him out when we weren’t talking business....”

“He sure sounds like a guy you would tune out,” is the last thing Shawn says before he thanks Ruby, gets one last good glance at her open books, and leaves the bar practically falling all over Lassiter.

Partially out of pretend-drunkenness, but mostly out of real excitement.

 

*

 

They walk out of  _ Chesapeak’d  _ with arms around each other’s backs, firmly clutching each other’s opposite shoulders like they’ve done many times before — but this time, instead of Shawn being lead out of a crime scene in a sort of walk of shame, it’s in victory. And it’s  _ mutual _ . And once they’re well out of earshot of anyone inside the bar, Shawn jumps halfway out of Lassiter’s grip.

“Holy  _ shit _ , Lassie! That was probably the  _ least _ like a cop you’ve ever acted....”

In any other situation, Carlton would be offended. In this one, he simply grins and claps Spencer on the back again, and says,

“If that asshole  _ is _ in Santa Barbara, then this is officially in my jurisdiction, Spencer.... I  _ will  _ get to be the one to slap the cuffs on my robbing, murdering dad, and I’ll get to be the one to bring him in, and....”

He trails off as they reach the car, and Carlton simply leans against it for a moment, overwhelmed by what this means.

“You wanna head back right now?” Shawn asks, hopeful. He’s pumped. He’s  _ ready _ to go find him, and Lassie clearly is too, but —

“Neither of us should be driving right away,” he says, police instinct kicking in. “And by the time we’re both entirely sober, that would make the time we get back to Santa Barbara pretty goddamn late....”

It’s not just pragmatism keeping Lassiter from just getting in the car now, Shawn can tell — it’s some kind of apprehension, too. It’s happening too fast for him. He doesn’t know if he’s ready to catch his dad  _ right away _ when he had at least a couple days in mind.... And Shawn gets it. This isn’t a regular case.

“Well, it looks like there’s a motel right down the road from here. If you don’t mind walking.  _ Though _ I really don’t think a minute or two of driving will hurt anyone, Lassie.”

Carlton stands up straight and twists around to see, just barely, a star-shaped motel sign sticking out from behind some trees... Nevermind how the hell Spencer was able to see it so quickly in the dark, he nods and immediately opens the back doors of his car to grab their overnight bags.

For half a minute they walk in silence, still coming down from the high of hitting this milestone in the case. 

Then, at least for Carlton, it fades enough for things to feel a lot more real. More solid, and somehow... very much like that night after the Drimmer Incident, only two months ago. The cars zooming past them on the major road they’re walking along, the 24-hour businesses of downtown Lompoc putting their nightlights on, the silhouettes of palm trees against a light-polluted sky, this summer night’s wind, this narrow sidewalk —

_ This _ ... is happening. It’s dark and it’s late and it’s quite honestly  _ very _ nice outside, and he is bumping elbows with Spencer as they walk, together, to a motel down the road. He didn’t really think about it earlier, when he was packing or when he was driving to Spencer’s apartment or even on the way here, but now, it’s very difficult  _ not _ to think about it.

He looks over at Spencer, who’s only facing forward, and he feels a heavy, distinctive rush of gratitude. Carlton knows that, as much as they’ve butted heads both prior to this and during, he would  _ never _ have gotten to this point without his help.

And he knows, in a way that he doesn’t have the will to ignore or deny, that he  _ wants _ ... so, so many things. He wants them just as much as he’s afraid of them.

For one moment, he thinks he might actually have the conviction to say or do something — and the very next, Shawn comes out of his own thoughts and notices him staring.

“Were you saying something?”

That  _ would _ be a good excuse for why he was staring, wouldn’t it? Unfortunately, Carlton’s stupid mouth has to open and immediately answer, “No.”

_ God dammit. _ He feels a pang of humiliation and faces forward. 

But then he realizes, “Were you zoning out? You that drunk from one bloody mary?”

“I’m not  _ that _ much of a lightweight, Lassie,” Shawn scoffs. “And even if I was, that just means I have to pay less for alcohol than you do!”

“Except I paid for your drink, too.”

“Touch é . But either way no, I was  _ not _ zoning out. In fact I was thinking about Ruby — and don’t worry,  _ not _ in the way you might assume. You know what they say about assuming. But — no, just... the more I think about it, something was just  _ off  _ about that whole interaction,” Shawn tells him quietly, then furrows his brow as he goes back into thought.

“Well, of course something was off — she’s a  _ criminal _ . God, I can’t believe I handed fifty dollars to a criminal.... Spencer, I’ve never made an illegal bet in my  _ life _ .”

For a second, Shawn is too amused by Lassiter’s crisis to remember what he was thinking about. But he snatches that drifting mindset back quickly.

“No — trust me, Lassie, it wasn’t just that. I  _ saw _ the books. Your dad owed her over twenty grand. Now, I’m not super great at math so correct me if I got it wrong, but in order for him to have gotten that much money from the robbery, each section of those cash registers would have to have been filled to the  _ brim _ .”

“Well, maybe they were,” he says reflexively, trying to rationalize it — but after a split second even he knows that that’s virtually impossible, considering the state of that gas station. It didn’t even have  _ security cameras _ . “...Or maybe my dad scrapped the car after the robbery, and  _ that’s _ how he got the rest of the money, which would explain why it hasn’t been found yet — hey, either way,  _ why _ are you suddenly doubting this?”

He turns to look at Spencer again, vaguely affronted, and feeling that rush from a couple minutes ago fade away entirely.

“Lassie, don’t be Gus,” Shawn says — and then pauses, a little surprised with himself for using that one on Lassiter. “...I’m not ‘doubting’ anything. I’m just telling you facts, and the  _ fact _ that your dad robbed a crappy gas station to pay back a twenty-thousand dollar debt... doesn’t make sense.”

“And you got that number, what, from reading it backwards and upside-down on a notepad across the table? Has it occurred to you that maybe you just read it wrong? Maybe it was only  _ two _ -thousand, or maybe you read the wrong name, or — ”

“Reading things backwards or upside-down or across a room is how I solve  _ half _ my cases, Lassie! I  _ know _ I read it right.”

It occurs to both of them, very quickly after he says that, that he just admitted to a non-psychic method. Carlton, personally, was entirely expecting him to claim something about visions, or spirits...

And now he doesn’t know what to say. 

He opts for staying quiet the rest of the way to the motel, which bothers Shawn because  _ he _ expected to hear some kind of “gotcha!” the moment it came out of his mouth.... But he supposes that he’s known that Lassie at least sort of knows for a while now.

Shawn also knows that he should probably let it go — that there are  _ plenty _ of possible explanations for what he saw in Ruby’s books, that this doesn’t change anything about finding Lassiter’s dad anyway. But — maybe he’s over-thinking,  _ but _ this one thing not making sense has gotten the ball rolling... and now he’s remembering all the characterizations he’s gotten from personal accounts of  _ Carl _ versus the robbery, and it just feels  _ weird _ .

After they’ve gotten their motel room and chosen their beds, and even after Lassiter is no longer concealing the gun strapped to him, he simply can’t stop himself from pushing it.

“Hey, Lassie... what was your dad like?”

Carlton’s heart truly stops for a second, but he merely throws Spencer an annoyed look while he takes his shoes off.

“I already told you I only have about five — ”

“ — _ five years worth of memories of him _ , yeah,” Shawn remembers. “But  _ of _ those five years, you gotta remember enough to make  _ some _ kind of vague profile.... The more I know, Lassie, the better chance I’ll have at finding him.”

Carlton  _ knows _ that, but he hates the tone he has to hear it in.

“He was a criminal, Spencer. That’s all he’s ever been.”

“Okay, I know you don’t like to believe this,” Shawn starts, ignoring the scowl forming on the other man’s face, “but even the worst criminals are still three-dimensional people with facts about them that  _ matter _ aside from just ‘they’re bad.’ And I know you  _ must _ know that, because you’re a detective, and you’re the one always telling  _ me _ that life isn’t a movie! So — what, did he do drugs? Had affairs? Was he violent — ?”

“He wasn’t around enough to BE anything, okay, Spencer?” Carlton finally shouts, shooting upwards from the edge of the motel bed and furiously rubbing at his face. “You want to know what I can remember? He just wasn’t there — and when he  _ was  _ there... he was drunk. That’s it! He was and is  _ a _ drunk, and I know because about ninety-percent of all his jail time is due to him making an ass of himself while completely wasted...!”

He trails off and realizes he’s been pacing, and then he chances a look at Spencer’s face. It’s _ just _ sad enough for him to be able to tell, and god, he hates that.

“I spent some real time with him once,” he continues, not entirely sure why. “ _ Once _ . We went on a trip up north and he left me alone, probably to go drink, and I got lost in the snow and almost died. Does that help you, Spencer? Can you  _ psychically _ get something from that?”

_ Oh, god. _

Shawn couldn’t answer that if he wanted to. He can only sit there, on the edge of his motel bed, and hold Lassie’s gaze with an intense, painful mix of sympathy and regret.

Carlton wants to storm out. Hell, he almost  _ does _ , but then he realizes that he’d have nowhere to go, and that he doesn’t even have the energy.... So he forces himself to calm down. At least enough to sit back down on the bed and finish shucking his day clothes off.

“...Sorry,” Shawn draws up the courage to say, as he starts doing the same.

“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Carlton snaps, but quietly now. “You just... you wouldn’t — ”

“I wouldn’t what, Lassie? I wouldn’t  _ understand _ ?” Shawn gives a mirthless laugh. “You think I can’t understand having a shitty, emotionally neglectful, occasionally  _ dangerous _ dad — sorry, but have you  _ met _ Henry Spencer?”

Slowly, Carlton straightens up and turns his head around again. And with minimal effort he vividly remembers the several hours he has, indeed, spent with Henry. A few of which were filled with anecdotes about Spencer’s childhood... and which clued him a bit into how Henry treated him.

And he gives him an awkward, apologetic look, as though to say  _ touch _ _ é _ .

They’re quiet after that.

 

***

 

Santa Barbara has about 200 separate businesses that offer some kind of lodging. Assuming that Carlton Lassiter Sr. is hiding out in one of them... regardless of how much money he might have, he probably isn’t in a nice one, where people are more likely to report him if they recognize him.

He isn’t  _ that _ stupid. Probably.

So that narrows it down a considerable amount. The cheaper places usually  _ are _ the shadier ones — the ones run by people who’d have no business if they turned away criminals, that is. And it’s easy enough to just get a list off MapQuest and start with the very cheapest.

Of course, that sends them all over the city in every direction. Which gets pretty frustrating after the first five motels, and especially after the hour’s drive back down here in the first place.

“Do you happen to know  _ why _ he’d choose to come back here specifically?” Shawn eventually, tentatively asks. 

He’s already a little on edge himself from a lack of good sleep, and he _ really _ does not want to start something like what happened last night (and partially  _ caused _ his lack of sleep), but he’s hoping for some insight. 

“Probably just missed the place,” Carlton shrugs. “I sincerely doubt he wanted to come see my mom again, if that’s what you were thinking.... And, even if he did, she’d have called me. But... Santa Barbara’s just a nice place to live, and it probably isn’t any deeper than that, Spencer.”

That makes sense, and Shawn agrees, but it also brings up another question that he’s surprised he doesn’t already know the answer to.

“...Were you raised here, Lassie?”

Carlton is similarly surprised that he has to ask, but has no problem answering.

“Yeah — well, on the west side of town. Why?”

“No reason. But, uh, I think I  _ might _ have a better idea of where we should be looking.”

 

*

 

Personally, the biggest factor in Shawn moving back to Santa Barbara three years ago was for Gus. He hadn’t been having any luck in romance or just human connection in general for a while, and he was desperately missing it, and frankly, it was just about time that he visited his best friend again.

At the time he didn’t necessarily plan for his forever roadtrip to end  _ permanently _ , but hell if he isn’t glad that it turned out this way.

Nevermind all the connections he’s fostered (in some cases, rekindled) since he came back, though... there’s simply no place like Santa Barbara. Underneath the rich white guys and their boats, there’s a rich  _ culture _ . There’s minor celebrities. There’s obscure mash-up cuisine. There’s a permanent air of nostalgia, somehow. There’s an  _ insane _ amount of white-collar crime and creative, more-than-meets-the-eye murders.

There’s almost every possible California vibe in one, condensed place and, most  _ importantly _ ... there’s the beaches.

“You think he’s shelling out no less than a hundred-fifty a night, as a wanted man, just to stay at a beachfront motel?”

“Lassie, you’re forgetting — he probably believed he’d be getting away with it, and he wouldn’t have realized he was a suspect until the next day. By that point he definitely  _ already _ had the motel room! Even if he switched motels or even left the  _ state  _ afterward, he’d — ”

“He’d still have been there long enough to leave a trail,” Carlton realizes with a snap of his fingers, and he and Shawn point at each other in sync. 

_ And  _ I _ have jurisdiction to demand security footage, now. _

Mostly forgoing price and shadiness as a factor, they’ve narrowed it to a beachfront property, likely within walking distance of a bar and/or liquor store — possibly even one that has its own bar. That leaves them with two options, and they start with the one nearest to them.

Funnily enough, it’s also only a five-minute drive from Henry’s place.

Like they’ve done with all the other motels they’ve tried, they walk into the front office and immediately use the biggest asset they have:

“Hi, have you had anyone get a room here in the past week who looks like him?”

The young clerk follows Shawn’s pointed finger to Lassiter, who has somewhat come to accept this.

“I don’t think so, why?” she says — and shakes a little as she shrugs and folds her arms. She’s  _ lying _ .

Shawn taps Lassiter’s back to let him know, and with almost frightening readiness, his hand is inside his jacket, then pulling out his badge and showing his gun. The clerk immediately drops her arms and breaks, but doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it.

“Sorry, okay — he’s paying like, twice the rate to stay here. Do I have to turn the extra money in?”

“ _ Just tell us the room number _ .” 

His own pulse is deafening in his ears, making him speak a bit outside of himself. He can’t even care about the obstruction of justice at the moment — though he’ll surely deal with that later.

She hands him a room key, too, but they don’t need it. Or really, Carlton doesn’t want it. He doesn’t  _ want _ to just walk right in on his dad, after all these years... No, there needs to be  _ some  _ kind of barrier, even if it is a bit impractical. What can he say? He’s a sucker for a proper entrance.

“You want me to go around back, in case he tries to sneak out the bathroom window?” Shawn asks as they approach. But, to his surprise,

“No. If he runs, I want to be the first one chasing him.”

And then he knocks — but casually, like that lady clerk might. His heart beats in his throat.

It’s only been about a week since he was even reminded of his dad’s existence, but  _ god _ , it feels like the culmination of the case of a  _ lifetime _ when the door finally opens.

The younger Lassiter already has his gun trained on the older’s chest. His hands go up in a brief terror before he seems to realize —

“Carlton?”

“Surprised to see me, Dad?”

_...Oh, no.  _ “Uh, Lassie — ”

“You gotta be  _ kidding _ me, Spencer.” 

_ Right now? Really?  _ Nevermind the fact that Spencer got him here — he  _ really _ has to ruin his fucking moment even  _ now _ _ — _

“I promise you, Lassie... I wish that I was.” Shawn rarely hates it when his own hunch turns out to be right, but he was honestly hoping to god against this one. Unfortunately, the proof was plain as day the moment Lassiter’s dad put his hands up, and now it sits, heavy, right in the pit of his stomach, as he glances between the other two men. “...But we were both wrong. This isn’t even the most family-friendly version of Heat.”

Now both Lassiters look especially confused. Does he really have to spell it out?

“Lassie. It’s  _ The Fugitive _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw i personally envisioned ichabod as jon bernthal, and ruby as stephanie beatriz, but if someone else popped up in your mind instead, that’s canon too.
> 
> also, i made chesapeak’d up entirely. but putting old bay in bloody marys IS a thing people on the east coast do.


	6. a coincidence

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alternatively titled: Who Framed Carlton Lassiter
> 
> I just didn’t want such a spoiler to be in the official chapter titles, which you could easily see on accident.
> 
> also, i think kurt russell could pretty effectively play lassiter's dad.

Okay, maybe not  _ exactly _ like The Fugitive, because Lassiter Sr. never made any attempt to go and prove his innocence, even when his hiding spot was one short drive away from a certain psychic detective agency that could do so.... But Shawn’s main point still stands.

“You’re the one who led me here in the first place, Spencer — _ what _ are you talking about?”

“Look at his hands, Lassie.”

Carlton refuses to take his eyes off his father’s face for several seconds — not out of spite, but precaution. But his curiosity does get the better of him, just long enough to glance between them.

It still takes him a moment to realize what Spencer is talking about, but when he does —

“Oh... god,  _ dammit _ .”

 

*

 

There’s no scar. There’s no stupid scar  _ anywhere _ on either of his dad’s stupid hands, and his dad has barely even said a word since they showed up, and now they’ve got some fucking things to figure out and also holy  _ shit _ , now that they’re in it this room is  _ way _ too nice for a criminal to be hiding out in.

First things first, Lassiter Sr. is getting handcuffed to a table that’s bolted to the floor, so his son doesn’t have to maintain his gun while he paces this out. So much for a dramatic entrance.

“Hey, uh... is there a reason I’m not on the way to the police station right now?” is the first complete sentence Lassiter Sr. has the chance to say. Everything before was mostly vaguely confused grunts while they haphazardly shoved him inside.

Now that Shawn can step back and see both of them together, it really is so surreal. It’s like an angry, Irish nesting doll — like if he broke Lassie apart, out might come yet another, slightly lankier and younger version of him.

He has to shake that mental image out of his head before he answers his question:

“Because we know, contrary to what the Lompoc police believe, that you had nothing to do with that robbery.”

“Okay, you know what, he  _ did _ ,” Carlton snaps, now on the verge of a breakdown, “because he still definitely stole the car that was used in it — ”

“Hold on,” Lassiter Sr. interrupts along with a loud  _ thunk _ of metal on wood. His son whips around in alarm, but then it’s pretty clear he simply forgot that he was handcuffed. “...How do you know I didn’t rob the place?”

Shawn takes that as his cue to step forward, and to slowly raise a two fingers to his temple. 

“We know because I’m a  _ psychic _ , Jack. The  _ lead _ psychic for the SBPD, as a matter of fact, and with you liking Santa Barbara so much I’m actually  _ appalled _ that you haven’t heard of me!”

“ _ Oh _ my god — ” Carlton mutters, rolling his eyes so far he thinks he might pass out —

But Shawn continues, “Not to mention your  _ son _ , who may or may not be suffering from a stroke right now, is the Head Goddamn Detective for the SBPD. And his investigative skills combine with mine to make something  _ awesome _ . And infallible. And all of those words.”

Shawn isn’t quite sure where he’s going with this, but he knows that the places it’s  _ gone _ have made Lassiter more emotionally stable. Or at least fuming more quietly.

The older Lassiter still looks confused, but now too excited for that to matter, as he looks back and forth between them.

“So you can prove I’m innocent!”

“ _ Innocent? _ ” Carlton damn near laughs.

As he does he stills, and his head shoots up, and for the first time since they showed up, he really  _ looks _ at his dad. He looks at the man who made him and  _ didn’t _ make him — whom he hasn’t seen in person since he looked more like what Carlton looks like now, and who is... almost certainly hungover. While not at all a surprise, that makes his throat burn.

_ You know what, _ he mouths without saying another word to his dad, then crosses over to Spencer and pulls him aside. Not far enough for their conversation to actually be private, but enough to feel like it.

“Okay, so there’s no scar — that can mean a  _ lot _ of things, Spencer! Maybe — maybe the cashier was wrong, or maybe he just put on a fake scar to be noticed on purpose so the police would be lead in the wrong direction, or — ”

Shawn harshly grabs him by both arms at once — because if Lassiter can’t get ahold of himself, then he has to do it.

“Lassie, we both know he isn’t that smart,” he says, making no attempt to keep the man in question from hearing it. “And  _ think _ about it, man — think about all the other things that add up to this, that _ don’t make sense _ .... I know you really want it to have been him — and so did I! And so would practically everyone who interacted with him on a regular basis, clearly! But when you add all those things up to this? It does make sense. You  _ know _ it, Lassie. Someone framed him.”

He does know it. And Spencer is right about him just really  _ wanting _ his dad to be fully guilty. And he even looks genuinely sorry — he knows that Spencer means to be on his side, here.

But that doesn’t mean he has to be content with it.

“Even if that’s true,” he starts smoothly, loud enough that his father can hear him, and even turning to make eye contact with him, “there is absolutely no doubt that he committed several other crimes, and not bringing him in would be obstruction of justice. It’s bad enough that we’ve waited here as long as we have.”

With that, he grabs Spencer by the elbows to rip himself out of his grip and starts crossing the room again, now with the intention to get his father detached from the table and into the back of his car —

“ _ Lassie _ _ — _ ”

“ _ Hey, hey, hey, hey _ _ — _ !” Lassiter Sr. starts shouting in protest, ironically protecting his cuffed hand from view. “Come on, wait--listen to the psychic, hear me out!”

Carlton merely scoffs, but then Spencer runs to his side and grabs his arm. Even with both hands he isn’t strong enough to stop him for more than a few seconds, but it gives his father enough time to continue,

“Okay, yeah, I admit I’ve never exactly been an upstanding citizen, but I’m beggin’ you, Carl — you’re my son and you gotta know I wouldn’t  _ kill _ nobody — !”

“Do  _ not _ call me Carl,” he practically growls, walking right out of Shawn’s grip. “And I am  _ barely _ your son! All I have  _ ever _ known about you is that you’re a criminal, and that you ruin lives. Why the fuck do you think I wanted to be a cop in the first place? To put people like  _ you _ where you belong.”

After just a few seconds, Lassiter Sr. looks like he’s already given up on trying to defend himself, and he breathes a laugh.

“...You always were a little tattle-tale. Once a narc,  _ always  _ a narc, I guess. Hell, maybe I really should’ve stuck around so you couldn’t turn out to be such a — ”

Just as he starts that sentence, Carlton’s chest swells painfully, and his face burns, and his right arm starts rearing up —

And what cuts his father off is his fist making it only inches from his face, as a force holds his arm back. It takes Carlton a moment to realize that time hasn’t stopped, but that it’s  _ Spencer _ — that Spencer caught what was happening quickly enough (that he’s  _ strong _ enough at least for this moment) and jumped forward.

“Lassie,  _ don’t _ ,” Shawn pleads with all the breath that’s left in him after exerting so much energy, and now with no choice but to let go. Luckily there isn’t enough momentum left to carry his fist.

“Dammit — don’t make me cuff you, too, Spencer,” he says through gritted teeth, though now that moment of rage is gone and he knows how bad of an idea that would have been.

Regardless, while part of him is grateful, he struggles not to raise his fist again. Which Shawn can see plainly.

“Lassie. It can’t hurt to hear his version of events.... And Lassie’s Dad — you wanna get out of a lifetime in prison for something you didn’t do? Be nice, man. Rude little boys don’t get their dessert, and they especially don’t get exonerated. Wait — no, that was a weird thing to say... But you get it.”

“... _ Fine _ .” Carlton backs away from his father and takes a deep breath, but keeps his scowl for the most part. “What happened after you stole the car?”

“I took it to a chop shop,” he says immediately, breathing a sigh of relief. “Figured I could sell the parts for enough money to pay my debt with Ruby and then skip town with plenty left over.”

Shawn and Lassiter share a look. “Well, they clearly didn’t scrap it.”

“Yeah, I know. I just don’t know  _ why _ .”

“Well, for money, probably,” Shawn deadpans.

“And also because you’re a nuisance,” Carlton adds.

“Except I barely knew anyone at that chop shop!” his dad insists desperately. “I only met them once before — and I swear, I haven’t done  _ anything _ to ‘em that I know about. I know that doesn’t exactly help my case, but it’s all I can tell you.”

“How about — ” Shawn puts two fingers to his temple as Carlton rolls his eyes again — “if anyone at that chop shop has a scar on one hand?”

“Yeah, I wouldn’t know,” he shrugs. “I don’t pay attention to people’s hands.”

“What about anyone else you know?”

“I... not really? I don’t know!”

Carlton pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. “ _ Useless _ . Okay — I’m sure you can tell me this: How did you get to Santa Barbara? If you took a bus, it probably had a camera on it, and that’s an alibi for the time of the robbery.”

“Yeah, I, uh... stole another car.”

“ _ Son of a bitch _ _ — _ Spencer, we’re turning him in.”

“No, we’re not!” he argues, like he actually has a say in the matter. Which... alright, he kind of does. Somehow. “We need him to solve this thing for real, Lassie.”

“And who says  _ we _ have to solve this thing for real?” Carlton turns to him and now doesn’t pull him aside — almost forgetting that his father is a few feet away, this time. “We set out to catch him, and we  _ caught _ him. This was all I needed — or, wanted. The Lompoc police can deal with whoever framed him because — cause you know what? I don’t  _ care _ , Spencer.”

“Yes, you do,” Shawn nearly laughs, and Lassiter’s eyes narrow.

“If you’re trying to imply — ”

“No, you don’t care about your dad, but you care about  _ justice _ , Lassie, don’t you? You care about the  _ law _ . And you care about things being done right....  _ And _ you care about narrative symmetry, which is what you  _ won’t _ get if you’re not the one to pin the  _ real _ charges on your dad!”

“That last one is you, Spencer,” he feels the need to say first, for some reason.

“Come on, it’s a little bit you, too — ”

“And I wouldn’t get to ‘pin the real charges on him’ if we go back up there anyway because — if you forgot — I don’t have jurisdiction!”

“We can figure that out later!” Shawn grabs him by both arms again. “Besides, you know as well as I do that if the Lompoc police couldn’t get half as far as we did just in  _ finding _ him? Then they won’t manage to clear him of the murder charges, either.”

He watches the gears turn behind Lassiter’s eyes — the much heavier apprehension than when he first proposed this two days ago, the resentment for his father, the very clear feeling that he isn’t sure whether he’d  _ mind _ his father being convicted of a murder he didn’t do.... Which Shawn understands, even if it is pretty hypocritical. But he can’t allow Lassiter to become guilty of hypocrisy like that because he  _ knows _ that Lassiter will come to regret it.

“You know...,” Shawn starts to add, and only slightly hesitates to continue, “a couple months ago, a lot of people believed that you were a murderer when you were not. The difference this time, Lassie, is that we don’t have to believe  _ against _ the evidence. We _ have _ the facts... regardless of how we might feel about them.”

That does it, however much Carlton hates that it does. 

And somehow with his chest burning in all the right ways, he frowns deeply and pulls Spencer far enough from his father that the man won’t hear him.

“So what exactly do you propose we do if and  _ when _ he makes a break for it?”

“Oh, that won’t happen,” Shawn says like it should be obvious.

“You — ” Carlton has to close his eyes and take another deep breath. “You are  _ not _ a psychic, Spencer — and no amount of observation can flawlessly predict what people are going to do. Especially not irrational  _ idiots _ like my dad.”

Shawn mentally concedes that, but still feels confident enough about it to tell him,

“Well, if he gets the chance, we found him once and we’ll find him again — _ especially _ in a much closer possible range, Lassie! You’ll also be cordially invited to say ‘I told you so’ after the fact.”

That’s a pretty tempting invitation. Ultimately, however, what truly tips the scales for Carlton with almost  _ no _ misgivings about re-opening this investigation... is a realization of one more option, once all three of them are inside his car:

“Oh, and I swear to god, Dad, if you try to bail I  _ will _ shoot you.”

 

***

 

The plan, if they get caught with Lassiter Sr. on the way to Lompoc, is to claim that they found him and were bringing him in. But Shawn hardly thinks that’s necessary when they make a quick stop at the Psych office to pick up some important things, and when one of those things is a favor from Gus.

“Is that...?” Gus peeks through the blinds to, presumably, see Lassiter and his clone of a dad in his car. “Oh my God. You actually got him!”

“Yeah, well, not quite yet. It’s a long story. Actually, it’s not — it’s The Fugitive.”

Gus immediately dawns a look of understanding.  _ Thank you. _

“ _ Oooohhhhhh _ ... Wow. So you’re — ?”

“About to go figure out who switched the samples, yeah. Just thought I might need my police radio, a capri sun for the road, and a few hundred bucks?”

As casually as he says it, it doesn’t make it past Gus in the least. He immediately frowns and clicks his tongue at him.

“Hey, man, I’ve been mooching a  _ lot _ off of Lassie and crazily enough, I think now’s about the time that I stop pushing my luck. I promise you it’s for the case.”

He isn’t lying about that, which Gus seems to be able to tell, as Shawn immediately sees a look of vague resentment on his face and Gus’s hand going for his back pocket. He takes his sweet time, though, even as they hear several honks from outside.

“I hope you know I’m only doing this because I’d rather you make  _ me _ go broke than invoke Lassiter’s wrath,” he says, finally handing him the cash.

Meanwhile, Shawn can tell that Gus was prepared for this by the fact that he’s keeping that much money in cash on him in the first place. So he smiles warmly.

“You’re the hero Santa Barbara both wants and deserves, buddy.” Then Lassiter starts honking again  _ and _ yelling for him to get his ass back out there. “Gotta blast!”

 

*

 

Soon after arriving in Lompoc, they have to put Lassiter Sr. in another motel. Handcuffed to the sturdiest thing in there, naturally. And with a cup of water and a straw, so he doesn’t die. 

But not before scoping out the chop shop, which they  _ apparently _ can’t do without him because he “doesn’t know the address, only directions.” And they’re not even solid directions that can be put on paper, but simply “I’ll know where to turn when I’m there” directions. 

Shawn neglects to mention that that’s  _ exactly _ how he knows how to get to most places in Santa Barbara, but not out of any kind of shame. He just isn’t in the mood to explain spatial intelligence, or how he can remember the entire filmography of certain actors but not street names in his hometown.

So they find the place — a decent-sized garage on the edge of town with the road empty on both sides for about a quarter of a mile. An almost  _ too _ convenient and obvious place for a chop shop, if you ask Carlton. He has to wonder if the Lompoc police might just not have enough manpower or will to deal with it. 

And then — after turning back and dropping his indignant father off at that motel down the road — they work out their undercover story.

“I’m still Thomas Highway,” is the first thing Carlton wants to establish, in case Spencer was planning on using a different alias this time. 

“No, yeah, of course,” Shawn agrees without a second thought. “So — obviously, simplest route, we say we need a repair.”

Carlton frowns. “But there’s nothing wrong with my car. And they’ll figure it out too quickly for us to have time to do anything.”

Hm. Seems they  _ weren’t _ on the same page like Shawn hoped. Nevertheless, he follows through with the idea that he’s recycling from the last time he dealt with a chop chop.

That is, he reaches in the backseat for a shirt, wraps it around his hand, rolls the passenger window down a little more than halfway, and — to Carlton’s momentary  _ shock _ — smashes it. As he rolls it back up he sees that the rest of it still looks all cracked, but all the glass fell  _ out _ of the car, so he’s considering it a success.

“...Spencer,” Carlton finally says, quietly, as his eyes go wide and his jaw shakes. “I think I might actually murder you.”

Shawn turns back to him with virtually no concern or shame. “Lassie, relax. It’ll buy us an hour in there, and I’m paying for it.”

Hearing  _ that _ calms him down considerably, but he still feels one or two flames of rage licking upward out of sheer principle. He narrows his eyes.

“You mean Guster is paying for it.”

“The point is that you’re  _ not _ paying for it, Lassie, so I don’t see why that bothers you.”

On the way out of the motel parking lot and back down the road to the chop shop, Carlton explains in great detail exactly  _ why _ it still bothers him and that  _ no _ , it’s not weird for a man to have an attachment like this to his car, and in fact  _ Shawn _ is the weird one for not understanding why he can’t do something like that to another man’s car without permission! Nevermind the fact that Carlton knows he would  _ never _ have given permission.

Shawn is nothing short of relieved when they pull up to the garage and get the immediate attention of someone who works there, which gives Lassiter no choice but to get into character.

“ _ Wo-hoah _ ...,” is the first thing they hear from the shaggy-haired mechanic who’s already walked out, coming over to look at the broken window. “That’s so weird. How’d it break like that?”

“Our game of polo got out of hand,” Shawn answers seriously, which makes the mechanic laugh. He’s probably stoned.

“Crazy night, huh?”

“ _ Very _ ,” Shawn laughs along.

“Well, you can come on and drive in — we’re not busy, and that should only take, like, an hour to replace.”

Carlton proceeds to do just that, and when he gets out of the car is almost immediately met with an increasingly familiar, startled expression. This time, on a middle-aged bald man who is clearly, based on a patch on his uniform, the boss around here.

“Sorry,” the man says even quicker than any of the others, “you just look a lot like... someone I know.”

Carlton just sighs, now. “I guess I just have one of those faces.”

“No, no, you have a helluva unique face, dude,” he tells him, tilting his head and scrutinizing him with an odd sort of smirk.

“He’s right,” Shawn just now arrives by his side and chimes in. “It is  _ pretty _ unforgettable — like the sunrise over Giza, or that one commercial jingle with the clap-on lights.”

While both the other men are processing that, Shawn looks down at the boss-mechanic’s hands. They’re scarred up, sure, just as the shaggy-haired guy’s were, but nothing that could be described as  _ massive _ . 

“ _ Anyway _ — ” He sticks his hand out to shake both of theirs — “I’m Ezekiel. You can call me Zeke. You guys thirsty? I got a fridge in the other room, drinks are free to paying customers....”

Without even yet seeing proof that they can afford the repair, and barely giving Shawn and “Thomas” a chance to introduce themselves, Zeke is  _ overwhelmingly _ friendly. It’s a pleasant surprise at first, especially with Shawn really getting his money’s worth in soda — but after a good ten minutes, they’re struggling to get away.

“Why is it  _ always _ the bald white guys?” Shawn thinks out loud, when they finally do. 

“He’s probably on some kind of uppers,” Carlton tells him. 

“Well, I can’t blame the dude. Pretty slow day, here on the set of Who Framed Carlton Lassiter....”

Before taking their chance and actually getting a good look around, Shawn grabs his fifth pepsi from Zeke’s fridge.

 

*

 

Even Shawn becomes more and more convinced by the minute that this is a dud lead. As certain as he is that the car Lassiter Sr. stole would have been taken directly from here to the gas station, they come no closer to figuring out  _ who _ did it or precisely  _ why _ .

The car was definitely scrapped promptly after returning from the robbery, so there goes any potential evidence regarding that. Neither Shawn nor Carlton believed it would be that easy, anyway, but even the glimpses Shawn manages to steal of paperwork from Zeke’s office give him nothing.

In the meantime, Carlton swallows his pride, and he uses his appearance as a catalyst for conversation the same way he did last night, hoping to pinpoint a motive among these people. But true to his dad’s word, no one here seems to have known him well enough to say anything terrible about him. And if they’re dealing with someone who commits murder and frames someone else for it just out of  _ annoyance _ , then, well... they’d have a lot more to worry about.

Zeke clearly knew him the best by far, but all he’ll say about why he was so surprised is that he figured he’d never see Carl again.

_ Most _ confusingly — that is, despite the fact that it’s expected with the profession, they find absolutely no one with a noticeable scar on one hand. Some along their arms or necks or legs, sure, some with scars that creep down over their wrist and a  _ little _ onto their hand... but none of those people have anywhere near the same body size and type as Lassiter’s dad.

After a point, Carlton is inclined to act on a whim. He tells Spencer and anyone else who cares that he needs to make a phone call, which is absolutely true, and steps out of the garage.

It picks up after four rings. Carlton smirks, imagining all the fumbling his dad probably did to answer with no free hands, and how he’s likely bent awkwardly over the nightstand in order to put his ear to it.

“There’s something about the chop shop you’re not telling us,” he says immediately, and as low as he can even though he’s well out of range of anyone who might listen in. “Or something you’re forgetting.”

“Well, if I forgot it, how do you expect me to tell you?”

“...You understand this makes the difference between whether or not you get wrongly convicted for  _ murder _ , right? Think  _ harder _ ! Are you sure you don’t have any suspicions about Zeke having a part in it?”

“...Who’s Zeke?”

Carlton’s grip on his phone tightens. “God, you’re useless — the  _ boss _ , Dad. The bald guy. The guy y — ”

“Oh, yeah, I remember selling the car to him. I fuckin’ told you, though, I only met him one other time!”

“And what was the other time?”

“He and a couple other mechanics showed up at Chesapeak’d,” his dad tells him, and Carlton can hear the shrug in his voice. “I mean, I’m sure I saw them around more than once, but I only bothered talking to them the one time. They mentioned what they did and it’s how I got the idea to steal the car and scrap it in the first place.”

“And you... didn’t think that was important enough to mention before,” Carlton says, utterly baffled. 

_ How _ is this man related to him?

“I mean — ”

“Well, it’s getting clearer to me by the second,  _ Dad _ . This wasn’t just one person having it out for you. The organized crime of Lompoc is apparently pretty intertwined, and you got yourself caught right in the middle of it.”

His father starts to argue again, but Carlton all but tunes him out as he watches a fairly expensive car come up the road and pull into the garage — and notices, through the open driver’s window, a very familiar face.  _ Huh. _

“Call you back,” he says as he ends the call, and starts walking back inside.

But only as a reflex. He’s not going to call him back.

 

*

 

“Highway! Fancy seeing you here.”

Spencer is already talking to Ruby when Carlton makes it back to the garage, which he actually was  _ not _ quite expecting based on having seen Ichabod at the wheel. But he supposes he can’t be surprised.

She looks a lot more casual and less intimidating, today, but perhaps that’s just the lighting. And standing very close to Ruby is a woman he’s fairly sure he hasn’t seen before, but  _ something _ about her is making him think otherwise — though she is wearing a floral-printed romper, which a lot of young women are wearing these days. It’s probably just that.

“Hey, Tom,” Shawn starts with mostly real cheerfulness, “I was just telling Ruby and her girlfriend, Blake, about how crazy last night got — you know, with the fence-posts and the dogs and everything that led up to the window.... Or I guess you don’t know because you kinda blacked out.”

Carlton just grimaces, unsure whether to be grateful that Spencer crafted him an excuse to not have a matching story, or annoyed that he would paint him in that light. 

“Pretty convenient that you should break your window, though,” Ruby says before he can think about it too much — and then spends a second pulling her wallet out of her extremely tight pockets. “’Cause now I can just give you your money straight up.”

“Oh, sweet, we won?” 

Shawn moves to take the hundred dollars from Ruby’s proffered hand, only to have his own hand smacked away by Lassiter’s.

“ _ I _ will be taking that, thanks.” Not enough money to make up for  _ all _ he’s spent for Spencer’s sake, but it’s decent. “What, Shawn, you don’t think the thrill of making a bet is enough of a reward?”

Shawn pouts, which Ruby and Blake both seem to think is pretty amusing.

“Aw, you don’t feel up to trying again, Highway?” Ruby pouts with him.

“I’m not the sort of man to push my luck,” he tells her.

“ _ Smart _ man.” 

“So — ” Shawn shoves his hands in his pockets, hoping to seem casual as he steers the conversation. “What are you guys doing here? I’m not exactly a car expert, but it doesn’t look like there’s anything wrong with yours.... In fact, it’s hella  _ nice _ .”

Ruby looks back at the car in question and smirks appreciatively. “Sure is. We’re just making a routine business stop — I do more than just work out of Chesapeak’d, you know. Oh, and of course Ichabod’s gotta visit with the boyf.”

She jerks a thumb to her left, where  _ Chesapeak’d _ ’s large, scary owner (and apparently Ruby’s driver) is leaning against the back wall, arms folded, and grinning brightly at Zeke, who’s doing the same. 

_ Oh.  _

The corner of Shawn’s mouth ticks up easily, while Carlton simply stares — for probably too long, as he feels his face get hot.

“Yeah, it’s a sight to see, isn’t it?” Ruby says, snapping him out of it. “When you know Ichabod like I do, it’s even crazier that he’s such a romantic.”

“Like you aren’t, too,” Blake says, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, quit embarrassing me in front of my new friends!”

While those two giggle at each other, and luckily while Carlton is temporarily at a loss of what to do next, that shaggy-haired mechanic approaches and taps him on the shoulder.

“Hey man, your window’s good as new. Wanna come take a look at it before we bill you?”

“Yes,  _ please _ .” 

Soon after Lassiter gives Shawn The Look and walks away with the mechanic, Ruby breaks apart from Blake and glances between both of them.

“Well. Business is calling. I’ll be right back.”

She then smacks a kiss on her girlfriend’s cheek before walking off herself, leaving the two of them alone. Normally, this sort of thing is awkward as hell, but Shawn finds himself pretty quickly telling her, in complete honesty no matter  _ what _ kinds of things he’s started to suspect,

“You guys make a  _ really _ cute couple.”

“Aw, thanks.” Blake grins and blushes almost immediately, but that might just be because she’s so pale. “You guys too.”

Shawn’s heart skips a beat, and then several more.

“...Yeah?”

 

***

 

Zeke winds up giving them a discount because he just likes them  _ that _ much — and because his boyfriend and “business associate” probably put in a good word about them, they can only guess.

The thing is that, now that it’s done (with his window really,  _ thankfully _ looking just like it did), that doesn’t leave them with much of an excuse to stick around. They don’t exactly have a reason to, either, since they’re still lacking in a solid suspect or even  _ motive _ —

But Carlton, for all that he was sure earlier that he’d never seen Blake before, is now even more stuck on her. 

And Shawn, while he truly doesn’t recognize her in the least, is unhesitatingly supportive of Lassiter’s gut feeling. Within a minute of him voicing it, Shawn figures out a way to covertly snap a picture of her, and in the next minute, they’re in the car and back on the road.

“That’s  _ not  _ a coincidence, Lassie,” is the first thing he says, a little breathless with his heart beating so hard in suspense.

“I _ know _ ,” Carlton responds, and grips the wheel harder. “I just wish I knew what it means. God, if I could just get a  _ warrant _ up here — ”

“Hey — actually... what if it  _ is _ a coincidence?”

Carlton glances away from the road for a split second. “What?”

“What if we’ve been going about this all wrong? — Trying to figure out who framed your dad and why instead of thinking,  _ maybe _ ... Maybe this wasn’t  _ about _ framing him. It probably wasn’t about the money from the robbery, either — Oh my  _ god _ , Lassie... This whole time, neither of us thought for a second about the guy who actually got _ murdered _ in the first place! And I don’t know about you, but Patrick the Cashier having a hit on him and your dad being framed out of convenience sounds a lot more plausible than any of those guys just hating him  _ that  _ much.”

...Shit.

“You think Patrick had a secret life that got him killed?”

“Don’t blame the victim, Lassie.” That earns him another sidelong glance. “I do think, however, that whatever Pat got himself into... Your dad might be able to help open that door.”

 

*

 

His dad is  _ not _ able to help open that door. And not just because he’s still handcuffed.

“What a surprise,” Carlton says with a mirthless smile — to both of them. “Once again, you’ve proven to be oblivious to the world around you.”

Lassiter Sr. rolls his eyes. “I’m so  _ sorry _ that I don’t pay attention to every one of Ruby’s clients. Hey — how do you even know this guy has anything to do with her?”

They technically don’t, but Carlton doesn’t want  _ him _ to know that. So for the first time, he doesn’t mind at all when Spencer makes the  _ I’m a psychic _ motion with his hand.

“Then why can’t you just psychically know who killed him?” his dad asks, as probably the most critical thinking he’s done since they found him. 

“It doesn’t work like that, Jack. The psychic universe picks and chooses when — you know what, nevermind. Just — ” Shawn sighs, a little tired of his own bullshit, and pulls out his phone and goes to his pictures as quickly as he can. “Maybe you know who  _ this _ is, at least?”

They’re both expecting another thoughtless “I don’t know,” but this time, Lassiter Sr.’s eyes go wide. And then he screws up his face.

“That’s the lady whose car I stole from the restaurant. How’d you get a picture of her?”

“You — ”

Shawn and Carlton share a look, and then turn back to him — and then share another, and then go through a series of hand-gestures and expressions and palms to the face, and —

“You STOLE your bookie’s girlfriend’s car, and you didn’t even KNOW it?”

It makes sense why she looked familiar, now, as Carlton had poured through every update on the robbery and seen her picture — but he can barely think about that because holy  _ shit _ .

“ _ Girlfriend _ ? — I didn’t know Ruby was a lesbian!”

“And you didn’t realize Mom was, either — but fucking  _ christ _ , you idiot, that is not the  _ point _ — ”

“Yeah, I, uh... I think I’m starting to get a pretty good picture of how things went down,” Shawn interrupts. But it doesn’t stop the other two from continuing:

“You’re gonna call  _ me _ an idiot when  _ you _ can’t figure this shit out without my help? The hell kinda cop are you supposed to be?”

“A damn  _ good _ one,” Carlton says without flinching, or blinking, and surprisingly without even stepping forward. “The kind who’s worked his  _ ass _ off to get where he is today  _ despite _ everything else, and who’s sticking around even though today happens to be the day that I have to save your sorry, undeserving ass!” Then, lowering his voice considerably, “Come on, Spencer.”

He reaches out to grab the crook of Shawn’s elbow and, either in spite of or possibly  _ due _ to the shock and intensity of what he just witnessed, Shawn goes along easily. 

And he doesn’t mean to spare another glance at Lassiter’s trash heap of a dad, but he can’t help but notice the man open his mouth out of his peripheral —

“You sure? Because right now you seem like the kind who just prances around town with his boyfriend all day. God... I really shoulda known leaving you alone with your mom would turn you into a pansy.”

Carlton has him halfway tuned out at this point, but he feels the elbow in his grip leave it, and the elbow out of his grip is coiled back behind Shawn before any of them know it.

He almost — _ almost _ has the misfortune of missing Spencer’s fist make contact with his father’s face.

“ _ Augh _ — !”

In the moment, while Shawn wasn’t fully aware of what he was doing the moment prior, he knows  _ exactly _ what kind of rage has overcome him. It’s been a long time since he really felt it — even longer since he actually lacked the inhibition that might keep him from going through with it. But maybe that’s just because the rage is strong enough.

The adrenaline somehow slows things down — he sees Lassiter’s dad jerk, trying to clutch his jaw in pain but caught by the handcuffs, and he feels the immense  _ satisfaction _ in every cell of his body, and he realizes that he normally wouldn’t be even half as strong enough to do this.

After a moment that feels like a hundred, he decides that he’s looked at the man’s face long enough and simply continues storming out —

— and feels Lassiter’s arm come around his shoulder, squeezing even tighter than last night.

Carlton feels his face split into a grin so wide it’s painful, but he can’t bring himself to care — and he really, genuinely,  _ laughs _ .

“Holy  _ shit _ , Spencer — ”

He slams the door shut behind them and finds himself shaking Spencer by the shoulders, feeling like he might have at some party back in college —

“I can’t believe you  _ actually _ just — _ Jesus _ , Shawn, no one’s ever — ”

_ No one’s ever done something like that for me before, _ he thinks very loudly, and part of him knows it’s obvious anyway, but part of him is as terrified to finish it as he is ridiculously,  _ openly _ happy to have just watched his dad get socked in the face....

And Shawn, still coming down from his rage, is startled by the silence and looks up.

And now his chest is burning for another reason.

He really doesn’t think he has...  _ ever _ seen Lassie smile the way he is smiling now. Not as wide, or as shamelessly, or with so much  _ light _ reaching his eyes, or especially so close, so obvious.... 

Shawn thinks it’s the most beautiful goddamn thing he’s ever seen.

He sees it start to fade, and Shawn’s heart gets caught in his throat — he  _ cannot _ have that, not now —

He kisses him. Shawn pushes himself up onto his toes and pulls Lassiter down by his neck and kisses him, right here in this motel parking lot.

Carlton’s own heart is threatening to beat right out of his chest and he’s  _ shaking _ — and he’s thinking what he has thought so many times before, that  _ no, he couldn’t possibly feel this way about me, he  _ can’t _ , he doesn’t,  _ why _ would he, he _ —

He ignores those thoughts and ignores where they are and he kisses back, allowing himself to be  _ too _ happy to be afraid, for once. He hooks his arm around Shawn’s waist and clutches Shawn’s face with his other hand and he pulls him closer, and he leans forward and pushes Shawn back onto his heels, and he damn near topples the  _ both _ of them over right here in this damn parking lot —

And as both of their minds are increasingly scrambled, certain things come to the fronts of their own accord.

A name scrawled across a notepad, crossed out with an X, upside-down and backwards.

A bald chop-shop manager and his “ruthless” boyfriend.

A scrawny man with an envelope.

A massive  _ burn _ scar.

Much too abruptly, Shawn jerks his face back — but a split second later, Carlton seems to sync up, and with intense eye contact they both say, damn near simultaneously,

“I solved it!”

Carlton almost drops him, then, but Shawn clings. And almost pulls him down with him.

“Wait, you — ”

After a few seconds of fumbling, they both manage to stand up straight again. Eyes still locked, and chests still heaving.

“You got it?”

“ _ We _ got it.”

“...You sure we’re on the same page?”

“If we’re not, we can figure it out on the way to the police station.”


	7. a dramatic irony kinda way

It doesn’t take long to come to an agreement on how to finish this thing. They did, more or less, have the same epiphany back there. Which sounds like an impossible feat in most situations, but this time, it’s just obvious.

And for the things that  _ aren’t _ obvious to both of them (reasonably), Shawn insists, with a smirk, that “You can find out the same time everyone else does.”

“Okay, I get why I  _ normally _ have to be surprised for your Big Reveals — not saying I like it, but I objectively get it — but why now?”

“If you don’t look at least kind of surprised, then it ruins the image of the  _ vision _ , Lassie.”

They’ve never explicitly talked about this, but Carlton knows what he means, and Shawn knows that he knows. It’s been nearly two years since Carlton could last tell himself that the “psychic” bullshit was purely bullshit, that it served no use, or even that he really wished Spencer had never pulled it in the first place—

If nothing else, right now, the LPD’s inability to dispute Shawn’s psychicness is what’s going to keep them out of legal trouble.

Well, once they get to the station. In the meantime, through all the planning, about half of Carlton’s mind is still on what happened back at the motel.

Everything felt perfect in the moment, but he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, now. He doesn’t have a precedent for this. He can’t tell if he’s supposed to acknowledge it or act like it didn’t happen or wait for  _ Spencer _ to acknowledge it because he is the one who initiated it—or does he have every right to comment on it because he’s the one who accepted it? 

Does he wait until later? That would only make sense, wouldn’t it? They don’t have time for big conversations. It should wait. If he’s going to do it at all.

But after some silence between them, he thinks he really  _ wants  _ to. He doesn’t know what kind of time they’ll have later, and he has  _ so _ many things on his mind, and if there’s one thing he really does  _ not _ want to fuck up more than anything else he has real potential to fuck up....

Carlton opens his mouth, and after that it’s sort of up in the air.

“I still can’t believe you—punched my dad,” he quickly rewrites. 

Shawn turns to him with a deeply relieved smile. He’s had  _ many _ precedents and he was still going through the same scattered, internal self-doubt.

“Well, you know, I—I’ve definitely wanted to punch my own dad a few times,” he breathes. “Or a few hundred. Just... not quite for anything like that? ...Sorry for keeping you from punching him earlier.”

_ You don’t need to be, _ Carlton thinks, but he still wants to ask,

“Why did you, anyway?”

Shawn shrugs. “It just felt like the thing to do.  _ And _ it totally catered to the good-cop-bad-cop thing we were doing and is  _ probably _ part of the reason we got what we needed.... But if you wanna get one in before this thing is over, Lassie, I won’t stop you.”

They park in front of the LPD within the minute. Now, their plan is especially time-sensitive and Shawn should  _ really _ run in there as soon as possible—

But he thinks he can spare a few seconds. Or he doesn’t think at all, really, as he leans over to steal a quick kiss off Lassiter’s cheek before his feet hit asphalt and the passenger door slams shut.

 

*

 

Lassiter stays in the car both out of convenience, and because they both know he’d rather not watch this part.

“Shawn?” the receptionist, Kim, seems to recognize him immediately. “Oh—dear, what’s wrong?”

He clutches his forehead as though he’s being hit with a cluster headache, allowing himself to fall forward and just barely bracing himself on the edge of Kim’s desk.

“There’s a real strong vision coming on, Kim, I— _ aaaaaaaahhhhh _ , god, it’s blinding, I got here just in time—”

“Jesus, you look like you need a doctor—”

“NO, THERE’S NO TIME!” he shouts, higher-pitched than he means to, and then uses the moment that everyone nearby is caught off guard to run up those stairs.

It’s not easy to look like you’re struggling through an intense psychic vision while running up stairs without  _ actually _ struggling, but Shawn manages. He makes it to the next floor before feeling officers’ hands clutch at the back of his shirt, and that’s just as far as he needed to make it.

“No, nonono wait—I’m trying to HELP,” he pants, desperately, before he can be dragged away. “I’m Shawn Spencer, I’m a psychic and I work for the SBPD, you can call Chief Karen Vick and  _ ask _ if you need to, I—”

“He is, he was just in here the other day!” comes a familiar voice across the room. Henry’s old friend, Rodney, rushes to the center and motions for the cops who’ve grabbed him to let go.

“Thanks, Rod— _ listen _ —I was just drawn here by psychic forces beyond my comprehension and oooooooohhhh boy they are  _ relentless _ ....” He hisses in fake-pain again and lets his legs stumble and carry him anywhere—which his unfamiliarity with this building helps. “I can only just  _ now _ start to, to make anything out, I just had to come  _ here _ —it’s—PATRICK MARTIN!”

Shawn pauses so he can hear the collective gasp.

“The cashier who was killed in the robbery?” asks the woman whose desk he’s practically bent over.

“What about him, Shawn?” asks Rodney.

“He’s... I’m seeing his killer! I think I—I know where he is and  _ oh _ , god—” He staggers once more, to sell it. “I’m being pulled toward the edge of town, to—to an  _ auto shop _ ...?”

“Hey, I know the one you’re talking about!” says one of the cops who grabbed him. 

Finally, Rodney rushes over to help Shawn up.

“You saying Lassiter is at that auto shop, Shawn?”

Shawn maintains one hand to his head, as though it’s glued there, and clasps Rodney’s shoulder with as much apparent exhaustion as he can muster.

“I’m _saying_... that if you get all available squad cars and follow me, I can help you bust this case and probably a few others _wide_ _open_.”

 

*

 

It’s a cacophony of mostly variations of “WHAT THE FUCK” when they get there. 

Plus, as Lassiter gets out of his car, a few cops pointing and asking  _ why does that guy look so much like Carlton Lassiter _ , which Shawn quickly brushes off with “it’s just a coincidence!” as they run in with the police.

Ruby’s crew are all still in the garage, luckily. It’s only been about half an hour since they left, but they’re still extremely relieved because it just makes this  _ so _ much easier.

Logistically, that is. Not so much emotionally. For all the experience Shawn has of making friends while undercover and then having to betray them, he never gets used to the looks in their eyes when he does so. At least his admiration for Ruby was almost entirely about the aesthetic.

“Shawn, I don’t see him anywhere,” Rodney says, sounding nervous.

“That’s because—” Shawn pretends to be physically struck with a vision once more, and lets two fingers hover over his temple. “It’s because Carl  _ wasn’t  _ the robber. He was  _ framed _ —and it was orchestrated... by the people here in this room.”

Many of the officers exchange confused looks at that, as well as the mechanics who probably don’t actually have anything to do with it.

“Well—not all of them,” he clarifies. “Only the handful right about  _ here _ , really.... But anyway! Carl was  _ hated _ amongst his peers... and rightfully so. Of course, his peers were in various walks of  _ crime _ .”

“Yeah, we knew he gambled,” Rodney chimes in.

“I’m sure you were. What you didn’t know was who he gambled  _ with _ ... who happens to be that Latina woman right there, with the sick tattoos and the Wuthering Heights girlfriend.”

Ruby makes eye contact with him right then, and it pierces right through him. She’s glancing obsessively around the garage, likely trying to figure out a way she can get out of this. But she can’t. There are armed officers at every exit, and there would be a bullet in her stomach the moment she put her hands down.

“...Two-hundred? Ten—No, I’m seeing—over twenty- _ thousand _ dollars... in cash. Handed from the owner of  _ this _ establishment to Carl, in exchange for the car that he stole from  _ none other _ than Blake Linton—who is right  _ there _ .”

“What the  _ hell _ is this?” Blake screams across the room, as all eyes are suddenly on her.

“I’m figuring that out right now, Blake!” he shouts back. Now both hands are on his temples. “He—yes, he stole from you to pay off his debt with your girlfriend... but, oh, he had  _ no _ idea who he was stealing from! He brought it here and the owner recognized the car—because why  _ wouldn’t _ he, when he knows you both so well? I’m hearing the phone call now, so  _ vividly _ —”

Shawn shifts demeanors entirely, doing his best impression of Zeke. “ _ Ruby, you’ll never  _ believe _ whose car just showed up in my garage, and who’s trying to scrap it. Fucking  _ Carl _ , and Blake’s car! Right? So what do you want me to do about him. _ ”

And then Ruby. “ _ You know what? Buy it from him and flip that shit. But don’t do anything to the car just yet—I’m sending Ichabod over to take it for a drive. _ ”

And then himself again. “And send Ichabod over she did, to do her dirty work. He has experience in getaway driving and he’s simply the most ruthless man she knows, and— _ oh _ ... I’ve got it now—A.J.? O.J.? Why on earth would I be seeing orange juice? I guess I am a little thirsty—but no— _ E.J.! _ Yes, the other cashier who was working that day—the only recognizable part of the robber he saw was a  _ massive scar _ on one hand.... I guarantee you, if you show E.J. the burn scar on the arm of that man right there, he will identify it as the hand he saw holding a gun to his coworker’s face.”

Up until twenty minutes ago, Shawn and Carlton both were exclusively picturing a thick, raised white line on the robber’s hand.... Granted, most people when describing a burn scar would have clarified it as such, so they feel it’s fair.

Now, Shawn catches Ichabod’s eyes. Unlike Ruby’s, they don’t stab through him. They’re just hard.

And Zeke’s eyes... well. They’ve been on Ichabod this whole time.

“But this wasn’t just for the money that would surely be pocket change to them, or even just to frame the slimy little man who’d been a nuisance in their lives, no...,” Shawn continues, with a little bit of a breathless laugh. “No, there was a third, much  _ larger _ bird to be killed with this stone, wasn’t there, Ruby?”

For the sake of dramatics, he slowly walks closer to her, still with both hands touching his temples.

“... _ Killing Patrick Martin _ was the goal, here. But  _ not _ because he’d done something to you—because his  _ brother _ did. If you count owing you eighty-thousand dollars as ‘doing something’ to you.... But you’d already done plenty to Ken, and he wasn’t paying up. He wasn’t afraid of what you might do to  _ him _ . So you decided to start going after his family to see if that might knock some money loose.”

“How can you  _ possibly _ know that?” she finally asks, voice shaking in evident terror. 

_ From getting a covert but good look at your books and matching up a name to a scrawny guy who vaguely resembled pictures of Patrick I saw on the news, _ would be the honest answer.

“Because I’m a psychic,” is what he tells her—and the whole room. “And that’s also how I know that a little over a week later, Ken did pay you back! What I admittedly don’t know is  _ how _ , but I’m sure that whatever he did to get it, he’ll fess up if it means getting you and Sticky Ichy over there in prison.”

And... that seems to be enough. Rodney gives a signal and all the standby officers are ordered to swarm in and cuff everyone, and there are simply too many for anyone—even Ichabod—to put up a fight. It would be pointless to even try. 

Truly exhausted, but not quite in the way he appears, Shawn lets himself stumble and fall into Lassiter’s arms as he walks back to him. 

Carlton catches him, not because he believes it’s real psychic dizziness or whatever else, but because he knows that Spencer will take them both down if he doesn’t. And also because he knows that Spencer’s doing it on purpose, which for the first time is... actually good to know. 

He still feels a twinge of annoyance as he props him back up. But the warmth in his chest, as Shawn clutches at his arms and smiles at him, quickly cancels that out. For a moment, in fact, he can’t think of a single quip.

Then he frowns and says,

“... _ Sticky Ichy _ ?”

Before Shawn can explain (like there’s even much to explain), Rodney approaches with a sort of amazed look, and a hand on either hip.

“Damn... you know, your dad speaks pretty highly of you, Shawn, but it’s really doesn’t compare to watching you in person, does it?”

“My dad speaks  _ highly _ of me?” Shawn spares a baffled look at Lassiter, then mutters mostly to himself, “What timeline  _ am _ I in?”

Rodney just laughs. “Honestly, I might try to get our chief to consider talking to Vick and seeing if she’d mind sharing you as a consultant from time to time.... Though I’m not sure if many of the guys here are ready to believe in that psychic stuff.”

“Well, trust me, plenty at the SBPD aren’t, either,” Shawn says, and puts an arm around Lassiter’s shoulders. “But I think what they care about, ultimately, is that my partner Gus and I bring  _ results _ .”

Carlton can’t stop his eyes from widening or his smirk from dropping in alarm at the implication that  _ he _ is Guster—but he doesn’t say anything to refute it. And Rodney luckily doesn’t comment on it.

“...I’ll keep that in mind. And—hey, really, thanks a lot for bringing the truth to light and I mean,  _ hell _ , in the process doing away with probably  _ most _ of Lompoc’s organized crime.... But Carlton Lassiter still did commit grand theft auto, and he’s still out there. I don’t mean to ask too much of you when you don’t even work for us, but do you—”

“Not yet,” Shawn tells him. He’s gotten out of potential charges for harboring a fugitive before, but he has no intention to lead the police to the motel where they’ve been doing just that. “The psychic energies surrounding this farce aren’t finished marinating yet, but... I’ll let you know if and when I scrape that side of the cosmic barrel.”

Now, Rodney nods slowly, like he’s unsure whether to take that seriously or not. 

“...Alright. I hope you do. Maybe just call us next time, though.”

As he watches the man shake Shawn’s hand and give him his card and leave, Carlton wants to laugh. But there’s something more time-sensitive on his mind, and he immediately starts back to the car, pulling Spencer with him.

“Come on—I want to get my dad to Santa Barbara and I want to get this  _ over _ with.”

 

***

 

The plan is to get his dad back to where he was originally hiding, which not only gives them a very reasonable amount of buffer time, but also puts him back where Lassiter has jurisdiction. Where he can still be the one to bring him to the station.

Too bad he seems to have escaped.

While most people—Carlton included—would take a few seconds to register something like that if only out of shock, Shawn feels the sheer weight of it the moment he opens the door. He doesn’t _ need _ time to see the pair of handcuffs open on the floor, or to hear no evidence of Lassiter Sr. simply being in the bathroom or anywhere else.

“Oh, ffff _ uck _ .”

“How the hell did he pick the lock?” is the first and biggest thing Carlton finds himself concerned with, as he rushes over to find a toothpick sticking out of the handcuff’s key chamber.

_ Must have found the toothpick in the backseat of my car. Fuck. _

“God dammit, I  _ completely _ underestimated him....”

Shawn feels the same, but he is somehow much more frantic as he checks all the windows in the room, including the back and the bathroom, to see whether Lassiter Sr. left through one of them. 

“He left right through the door,” Shawn realizes out loud after seeing no latches open or broken glass. “And I don’t think he just made a run for it.”

_ Shit, shit, shit, jesus goddamn shit— _

He was really  _ so _ goddamn confident earlier that Lassiter’s dad wouldn’t try this, and now they’ve spent all of this time just to find him gone, and it’s probably at least  _ kind of _ his fault for punching the guy—

And Shawn’s intense guilt and worry that this might all be screwed up for Lassiter is what fuels him—to run out of the room without another word because there’s no  _ time _ for that, and it’s on him not to waste any more of it.

It takes him a second to catch up, but Carlton follows him to the motel’s main office and watches him practically ram himself into the desk.

“Excuse me—”

“Has anyone reported their car stolen?” Shawn demands, chest heaving. 

The receptionist actually looks frightened. But then, he’s also a fragile-looking old man.

“Y-yes, about twenty minutes ago—why?”

Shawn already has his phone out of his pocket. “What was the vehicle description?”

“Oh, I... I advised her to talk to the police, I didn’t write—”

“UGH, OKAY—what’s the  _ room number _ ?”

Either this old man is too startled to think of a reason why he shouldn’t, or he simply understands that the situation must be dire, because he gives it to him. 104. Just a few down from theirs.

And Shawn is out of the office as quickly as he rushed in, and Carlton can once again only follow because this is happening faster than he  _ ever _ operates—and even now, he can only assume that Spencer means to knock and ask the owner of the car to describe it if she’s even still here—

But he just stands there. He walks down the lot of cars and comes to where the stolen car would have been parked and  _ stands _ there for five seconds before his fingers fly to the number pad on his phone and punch in the number that Rodney gave him.

“It’s Shawn Spencer, I know the whereabouts of fugitive Carlton Lassiter—you need to put an APB out on a white 2005 Toyota Camry, plate number 2RHT455—he’s probably made it to the highway by now but no promises.”

“ _ Got it _ ,” Rodney says, and Shawn immediately melts in relief as he ends the call and starts breathing again.

It takes him several seconds to have the courage to face Lassiter again. And when he does, he averts his eyes right after.

“Alright, I’m ready for it, say ‘I told you so’ and tell me that we should have involved the police earlier and that I’m an idiot and I  _ never _ should have gotten you into this mess...”

But Lassiter just stays where he’s been for the past minute and continues to stare. And Shawn can’t help but trail off as he notices. 

Carlton can’t fathom the truth of what Shawn just did—he can’t possibly  _ know _ how time slowed down for him, how his heartbeat was the only thing he could hear for those seconds stretched into minutes, how  _ overwhelming _ the adrenaline made everything, how he was pulling just a small handful of frames of memories to build the car that should have been there, that he never even had to especially focus on  _ before _ —

But he can imagine the general gist of it, based on what he’s learned about him.

Hyper-observation. Eidetic memory. Spatial memory. Natural deductive skill. He’s known more or less the truth of what Shawn does for a while, now... but he doesn’t think he’s ever seen him function quite like  _ this _ . Either at this inhuman level, or for such a clearly personal reason.

Quite honestly, Carlton feels  _ honored  _ to have had the chance to see it. He’s amazed and he feels nothing holding him back from expressing it.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been more in love.

“...You okay, Lassie?”

As though to tell him that he is not only  _ more  _ than okay but he can’t even be mad because  _ it was my fault he escaped too and what you just did was  _ the _ hottest thing I’ve ever seen _ , Carlton crosses the distance between them in one stride and meets him in a crushing kiss.

Thank god for Spencer’s bravery just an hour or so earlier, or he almost certainly wouldn’t have the conviction now to not only _know_ that all he wants is to touch him and kiss him, but to _do_ it.

This isn’t about gratitude. This isn’t about celebration. This isn’t even about Carlton’s amazement—because he wants this in  _ no _ way to be about his dad.

This is just something he’s wanted for a long, long time, and which he finally knows he’s allowed to do.

Shawn very quickly understands what the deal is, and he couldn’t be happier, but he’s still the first one to break it because he just  _ needs _ to ask—

“What about your—?”

“He’s the LPD’s problem right now,” Carlton breathes. “Until they find him there’s—there’s nothing we can do, is there?”

Lassiter kisses him again and presses closer, and Shawn gets the feeling that he has something specific in mind for them to do in the meantime.

He thinks they better get back in their motel room if they’re gonna do that.

 

*

 

“That night after Drimmer, I wanted to kiss you so fucking  _ bad _ , Lassie— _ Mm _ —”

Now that they’re making out against the wall of this motel, Shawn couldn’t keep that confession from slipping out if he wanted to. 

Though Carlton, as deep into this as he is—as hard as his heart is beating, as unbearably hot his whole  _ body _ is... hears something beyond what Shawn said. 

He has neglected to do  _ anything _ about his feelings for the longest time due to denial at worst, and not feeling like it was the right moment at best. And the small handful of times that he felt it _ could _ have been the right moment, he was afraid. Not necessarily of rejection, but that it was simply the wrong decision. That Shawn was just incapable of taking anything seriously. That he would only ever be interested in something casual, if even that. That any passes he made were jokes.

He never imagined that maybe Shawn has been afraid, too.

“I wanted you to kiss me,” Carlton tells him, voice husky as he presses their foreheads together, and then gives him another brief, sucking kiss. “I’ve wanted you to—”

Shawn takes that as a genuine request and immediately starts forward, pushing himself off the wall and Lassiter backward several steps until the back of his knees hit the bed and they both fall onto it, and Shawn can straddle his hips—

And he goes for the shirt buttons.

Carlton almost laughs out of the absurdity alone. “You don’t wanna take my jacket or holster off first?”

“Lass, if you think that you can keep me from your sweet, sweet sternum bush any longer, you are  _ greatly _ mistaken.”

He proves it by shoving his hand inside Lassiter’s shirt the  _ moment _ that there is enough room for him to do so, and raking his fingers through his chest hair so firmly that Lassiter moans.

Shawn follows through with the request and swallows those moans, and the only reason he doesn’t press him into the bed right away is because his hands are too frantically busy getting more buttons undone, so he can get both hands in there and just grab  _ fistfulls _ of that damn bush—

And Shawn finally does press him down, and he doesn’t draw it out in the  _ least _ as he kisses and bites down Lassiter’s neck because he’s far too impatient to get to his chest, and  _ fuck _ , once he gets his mouth on there...

“ _ Shawn _ —”

Carlton arches his neck back and fists Shawn’s hair like he’s getting sucked off because that’s what it fucking  _ feels _ like—for all that the guy has openly admired his chest hair for the past years, he couldn’t have expected he’d be  _ this _ obsessed, that Shawn would unhesitatingly run his tongue through it, that he’d bite and kiss everywhere he could reach, that he’d rip some hairs out while doing so and that Carlton himself couldn’t even  _ mind _ —

He hasn’t gotten this many hickies on his chest since... ever. God. It’s starting to get over-sensitive.

“I can’t take this anymore, Spencer, just—”

Shawn lets up enough so that he can grind down and watch his face.

_ Yeah, that’ll do it. _

But it’s not just the lack of release, it’s the  _ sweat _ that is building up in this jacket—so Carlton pushes himself up, and subsequently Shawn briefly onto his knees, and he licks into Shawn’s mouth again as he shrugs his windbreaker off, and fumbles with the straps on his holster because that’s  _ not _ staying on for their first time, and he grabs Shawn by the waist and flips him onto his back.

God, Shawn’s been looking forward to this. He pulls him down harder than he means to and manages to avoid their skulls colliding by Lassiter’s reflexes alone, and now  _ he _ gets to gasp and moan as teeth scrape his neck and hands go up his shirt and the full force of Lassiter’s hips drags their erections together—

And he almost doesn’t realize  _ what _ he’s hearing when his police radio goes off.

 

< _ Calling all units, White Toyota Camry spotted entering State Route 246 from West Ocean Avenue, I repeat, requesting all available units in pursuit of fugitive Carlton Lassiter driving a White Toyota Camry onto 246 _ >

 

“ _ Already? _ ” Shawn practically screams, throwing his head back.

Even Carlton, in spite of himself, is extremely frustrated that they caught sight of him so quickly. He quite frankly didn’t imagine the LPD so capable.

Still, there’s no question of whether or not they’re going to follow. Blue balls aside (it can be dealt with  _ later _ ), they’re immediately on their feet and fixing any undone buttons, getting shoes and jackets and holsters back on, and racing out of the motel room with only the bare minimum of decency and no discussion other than,

“I  _ knew _ this was going to happen—”

“No, you didn’t.”

“I never said I knew it in a psychic way! More like... a dramatic irony kinda way.”

 

*

 

Shawn has never been interrupted in the middle of sexual activity by something to do with a case—mostly because he’d have had to be having sex with Gus for that to reasonably happen before now—so he thinks it’s fair that it takes a minute for him to _really_ get his head on straight.

Then again, it’s never exactly been on straight, has it?

Regardless, neither of them recover from the emotional whiplash until Lassiter’s car is already down the road. 

And when they do, “Wait—dammit—which way is the 246 from here?”

Part of Shawn is  _ immensely _ proud to know how far he scrambled Lassiter’s brain without even taking his shirt all the way off. But the rest of him is still determined, through his own messy thoughts, to make this right. And he manages to grab onto some rationality for just a second.

“It’s on the whole other side of town,” he remembers. “Actually, we’re—yeah, we’re on the north side, so...” Shawn pulls up a map on his phone within the minute. “Woah. I think we just got  _ seriously _ lucky, and not just in the sexy way.”

Carlton glances his way and raises an eyebrow. 

“Keep going on this road, Lassie, and we might just catch up with your dad before the LPD does.”

*

 

Whereas the LPD has cars going straight through the very  _ busy _ 246, they were one short drive away from Purisima Road which is, essentially, a shortcut to a much higher point of the 246. Even better, it’s all farmland for a long way out. Enough that even Carlton “ _ the law is all but infallible _ ” Lassiter thinks he can get away with speeding a little bit. 

It’s not like he hasn’t already bent the rules  _ plenty _ the past few days.... Or like he hasn’t before. Or like he hasn’t given Spencer a free, albeit mostly secret pass to do it for  _ years _ .

“I think I’ve really rubbed off on you, Lassie!” Shawn all but shouts over the wind blowing through the open windows as they reach 70 MPH. “Speaking of which—”

“You really want to get into that conversation right now, Spencer?” he shouts back, narrowing his eyes on the road. He doesn’t need any reminders that might get him a little flushed or hard again.

“I was just gonna say that you might wanna smooth the back of your hair down a bit—hey, how’s mine look?”

Carlton almost immediately starts doing just that, and looks over at him for maybe a little too long. 

“Windswept,” he tells him.

“Like James Dean windswept or Morrissey windswept?”

“ _ Definitely _ Morrissey.”

Carlton wasn’t sure which of those were supposed to be the bad one, but Shawn lets him know as he grins and turns back to face the road. 

“Perfect— _ wait _ .”

Just as they come up on the roundabout connecting Purisima and the 246, Shawn spots what could very easily be a white Camry speeding through the latter. He promptly sticks his head out the car window to get a better look, and makes out that familiar mug through the glass, and—

“Holy  _ shit _ , we  _ actually _ got here the same time he did.”

Carlton’s eyes widen, and his heart stops, and everything slows down for a second. He sees the stolen car start for a turn around the median, and along with his incredible surprise that his dad would choose the smart route of escape, he’s hit with an impulse.

He acts on that impulse.

“Hang on, Spencer—” he warns, lips curling into a triumphant smile as he shifts weight onto the gas pedal—“I’m about to make an illegal turn.”

There’s no time for Shawn to awe at that line (or razz him for it, he couldn’t be sure yet) because Lassiter turns so sharply and suddenly that he’s jerked to the right, smashing his face directly into Lassiter’s shoulder.

“ _ I said to hang on! _ ”

He does, now, and before Shawn knows it the car is in the sidewalk, one wheel up on the median thus tilting him even moreso in Lassiter’s direction—

And as quickly as he turned, Carlton slams on the breaks, effectively blocking the road.

Two seconds later, that Toyota Camry skids to a stop to the right of them. 

Both of their hearts are beating so hard for a  _ lot _ of reasons, now, but they forgo giving a resolution to one of them in favor of getting out of the car as soon as possible. 

Lassiter Sr.’s first inevitable sight is Shawn, still as dizzy as he is  _ thrilled _ , stumbling onto the road. But one hot second later is Carlton, shirt uncharacteristically untucked from his pants, absolutely  _ gunning _ for him.

Because—as he predicted—the idiot actually tries to start making a run for it on  _ foot _ , even in spite of his son’s head-start and objectively superior leg muscles.

He tackles his father to the ground the moment his feet hit dirt. And  _ god _ , does it feel good.

“ _ Why _ would you—” Shawn runs up and starts, but has to pause to catch his breath, which takes several seconds. Both Lassiters turn their heads. “...Why would you  _ run _ , man? We were clearing the murder charges!”

Beneath him, his dad wriggles and coughs out, defeatedly,

“Yeah, but I already stole the car an’... I didn’t want to go back to prison.”

“Well, congratulations,” Carlton spits out, as excitedly as one  _ can _ in that tone of voice. “You just made it even worse.  _ Two _ car thefts and running from the law? Why, I believe that’s a minimum sentence of ten years,  _ dad _ .”

He takes his knee off the man’s back and hauls him up by the shirt, and... this is it. This is his  _ moment _ . His heart is pounding like drums in his ears. He’s going to say the things he’s always wanted to say, and he’s going to give him another sock in the face for good measure, and he’s going to  _ finally _ bring him in. 

...But his mouth doesn’t open. 

He suddenly has no idea what he’d even say. 

What the hell is  _ wrong _ with him?

He holds his breath and closes his fist. He doesn’t know  _ why _ he’s hesitating, but—

A second later, the sirens he’s heard in the distance for the past couple minutes grow deafening. And then it’s... too late. 

The sirens stop and he hears the sound of at least ten doors being opened, and Carlton recognizes he has no choice, now—and he can barely bring himself to look at any of the LPD officers as he just shoves his dad in their direction.

And then everything seems to move too fast.

Carlton looks down at himself, and he looks around at the farmland and empty fields that expand from here—he turns and sees Shawn frowning curiously at him, but he suddenly just seems like part of the scenery. It’s surreal. He can hear some of Lompoc’s officers thanking them for the help, he thinks he even hears that detective, Rodney, again... But it means nothing to him. 

He’s stuck in a bottle. And then he’s not.

Carlton feels the reality of  _ now _ hit him with such unexpected force that he finds himself sitting on the edge of the sidewalk, knees up to his chest because they’ve nowhere else to go. Part of him is watching his father getting locked in the back of a police car like it’s a movie. The rest of him is eight years old again.

It was just a month before Lauren was born, and the end of probably the longest period of time his father ever spent living at home. He didn’t know how to feel, that time. Because he was a kid.

He still doesn’t know how to feel. This time he has no idea why.

It should be immensely satisfying, shouldn’t it? And it  _ is _ —this is a moment he’s been looking forward to for his entire career whether he was conscious of it or not, but he’s just—he, he doesn’t  _ know _ . He isn’t  _ scared _ like he was back then, and he certainly doesn’t have the obligatory familial attachment that he had back then, and he would  _ die _ before he chose to believe that his father doesn’t deserve this....

Mostly, Carlton’s confused about himself. About why he couldn’t punch him. He knows  _ rationally _ that it would have been unprofessional, and either way he already got the blow he deserved from Shawn.... But he doesn’t know. He just knows that he hates his father with every fiber of his being... and that he couldn’t punch him. 

Shawn, who’s been standing to the side and watching between him and the LPD, knows the same thing. But he doesn’t waste his own energy on dwelling on it when he knows how much Lassiter must be—and when he honestly understands.

He sees the look on Lassiter’s face, and he sees Lassiter’s chest heave, and he finally decides to sit down beside him.

“...Sorry you didn’t get to do the final arrest, or whatever,” Shawn sighs, squinting out at those who are. “And that you didn’t get time to punch him.”

Carlton turns his head, and it’s like this whole investigation comes flooding back all at once. It’s like this is the first he’s seeing of Spencer in the long time, despite the mere few minutes it’s actually been.... And it’s like Spencer’s muttered words alone have given him clarity.

“It’s...” He looks forward again and lets out a breath. “Probably for the better,” he decides.

Shawn tilts his head and frowns. “Really?”

That gives him a wry smirk, for a split second. He cheeks it and starts shaking his head slowly.

“It would’ve been a waste of energy. If I think of something I want to say to him, I’ll just—I’ll visit him in prison later. A lot later. I think I’ve seen enough of my stupid dad for one decade.”

As he finishes that, Shawn lets out a breath of agreement and knocks their shoulders together. Other than that, he ignores his impulse to fill the silence and says nothing.

And for a minute, it stays like that. Carlton watches all but two of the squad cars leave, and several officers speak through their phones or walkies—likely contacting the woman whose car was stolen, or at least someone else to come pick it up. Other cars pass through the lanes that aren’t blocked off, but it isn’t exactly busy.

The sun is close to setting. There’s a slight breeze. Somehow that makes things realer.

But now, stronger than his cocktail of distress over the situation with his father, is just... Shawn. Without turning to him Carlton feels him there, and he vividly remembers how  _ happy _ he has been these past few days—how he can’t remember  _ ever _ being so happy, whether due to a case or otherwise.... And it’s because of what Shawn has done for him. What Shawn helped him do—showed up at his house at midnight and  _ insisted _ he help him do, in fact.

He swears, the moment he thinks of that, there are honest-to-god  _ butterflies _ in his stomach.

“Thank you,” Carlton tries to say casually, but it comes out with a heave of his chest. Then he thinks he has nothing to lose and meets Shawn’s eyes again. “...For doing this. I—I don’t know where I’d be right now if you hadn’t made that offer, Shawn, but I know it wouldn’t be anywhere close to this, and....”

There are so, so many things he is grateful to Shawn for. Things he knows for a fact are directly because of him—Juliet being his partner, to name one. His exoneration from murder two months ago. All the other cases he’s solved, even if Carlton was pissed that he couldn’t do it himself at the time. All the  _ light  _ he has brought into his life, even if it’s been absolutely blinding at times.... He’s taken away the monotony almost entirely.

He saved Carlton’s goddamn  _ life _ that night in Tom Blair’s Pub.

Carlton feels it all bubbling up, and he really, truly wants to thank Shawn for all of it. Maybe he will, someday.

“And we also, of course, wouldn’t have had the chance to... you know,” Shawn says, with a wink, “...give you  _ Thomas Highway _ as an alias.”

That makes Carlton smile for real, now, and he reflexively ducks his head down as he knocks their shoulders together again. 

“I mean, that was pretty  _ sick _ , right?” Shawn continues. “I’ve never been undercover with anyone but Gus—it was...  _ really _ fun, Lassie.... I’m sure you’ve had your fill of semi-illegal investigating for the year, and of course I don’t know how well I’d function not being at least  _ kind of _ the lead on a case, but—”

“Spencer.”

“You know, if the occasion arises and maybe  _ my _ dad—not Henry, of course, but my true father who is surely out there  _ somewhere _ —”

“Mind if we shelf that for later, Spencer?”

Carlton frowns at him, mostly out of exhaustion, and Shawn gets it. He gives him a sharp nod. 

“We do have...  _ quite _ a bit to talk about, huh?”

“I think you might finally, literally talk your ass off,” Carlton agrees.

“If I do, at least our motel room has already been paid for the night.”

Shawn doesn’t wink at him that time, but he does lean into him and smirk in a way that makes it obvious. And Carlton gets it, but—

“I... crazily enough, am  _ too _ goddamn exhausted to get back into that right now, Spencer.” He runs a hand through his hair, and looks at the setting sun, and looks at Shawn. “It’s been a long fucking day.”

Shawn sighs. 

“True _ that _ , Lassie.” Then, after a few moments of pause, “Well... I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. And I think I saw a Steak ‘n Shake somewhere in downtown Lompoc.”

Without waiting for an answer, Shawn pushes himself up from the curb and brushes off the seat of his pants. Then he holds out a hand for Lassiter.

“I’m buying,” he adds, when the other man simply cranes his neck up. “Actually, Gus is buying, but... what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

Carlton gives him a small smile, and then shrugs, and reaches up to take his hand and tells him,   


“Yeah, I could go for a burger.”

It’s about damn time they move his car out of the walkway, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in real life, there are unfortunately no steak n shakes in lompoc. but for the record, all street names mentioned in this fic are real.


	8. only do dangerous stuff when there's money involved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> an epilogue.

Two days later, having made sure those extra vacation days didn’t go to waste, Carlton goes back to work. This time it really  _ is _ completely refreshing to have his suit on—and his partner can tell. He doesn’t spill the details and doesn’t quite plan to anytime soon, but she seems perfectly satisfied that the conditions of their deal were met.

Around lunchtime the same day, Shawn and Gus are called into the Chief’s office. And so was Henry, apparently, as they see when they walk in.

“Dad—what are you doing here? Are you _ tattling _ on me to the Chief? I thought I could trust you!”

Vick leans forward and raises an eyebrow. “And what would he have to ‘tattle’ on you about, Mr. Spencer?”

“Alright, I admit it, it was me who drew on the walls,” Shawn sighs, to Gus’s visible relief. “I’ll go in the corner.”

“That’s  _ funny _ ,” Vick says, smiling, “because I thought you might mean how you’re consulting for other police departments, now.”

He exchanges a look with Gus, and then she hands him a newspaper titled  _ Lompoc Record _ , under which is the headline: 

 

**Unexpected Truth Behind Local Robbery-Murder Uncovered; Psychic of Santa Barbara to Thank**

 

“Huh. I’d have gone with something a little less wordy, but...” Vick frowns at him. “I don’t know what my dad told you, but I  _ promise _ , Chief, it was a one-time thing. I happened to be in town for a little wine-tasting, and my spidey-senses started tingling—and who would I  _ be _ to ignore such a clear-cut call for justice?”

“You don’t have spidey-senses, Shawn,” Gus for  _ some _ reason feels the need to say.

“Really, dude? Right now?”

“I’m just  _ saying _ , you’re absolutely nothing like—”

“You’re not in trouble,” Vick tells them, with a slight laugh, before they can get too loud. “Actually, after hearing about it from your father, who in turn heard it from some friends up at the LPD... I wanted to tell you, sincerely, good job. It sounds like you did Lompoc a serious favor in a matter of hours.... Oh,  _ and _ , of course, I have a case for you two.”

“ _ Sweet _ —” 

Gus takes the case folder from her faster than Shawn can, clearly excited to finally get another paying case—even if it does seem small. Just some of that classic Santa Barbara white-collar crime that they’ll only need a few hours to bust.

As they leave the Chief’s office to get on it, though, Henry follows and pulls him aside and inadvertently reminds him that his question never got answered.

“Did you really come here just to tell her about my case?” he asks before his dad can open his mouth. “Why? What’s your angle here, old man?”

Henry rolls his eyes and folds his arms. “As a matter of fact, Chief Vick heard about it from the LPD and called me here first. And I guarantee you she knows you weren’t  _ wine-tasting _ up there.”

“Well, yeah, I was pretty sure of  _ that _ , Dad. But I also got the impression it doesn’t really matter.”

“Regardless, Shawn—someday, it  _ will _ matter,” Henry says, disproportionately exasperated. But that’s normal. “And I’m sure there’s a lot to this case that I’ll never know about, but I’m telling you,  _ very _ seriously, that I don’t want you taking on something like this without being hired  _ ever _ again.”

Shawn purses his lips and nods to himself.

“So what you’re saying is...  _ Only _ do dangerous stuff when there’s money involved. Got it.”

“...Close enough,” Henry sighs—and then grabs him one more time before he can walk off. “And hey—don’t you go bothering Lassiter. From what Rodney told me and what I could put together from the gaps, it sounds like you put the poor guy through enough. He’s probably sick of you by now.”

Shawn takes a deep breath to keep himself from laughing—and he looks to Lassiter’s desk, where the man is searching through a folder, and after a moment Lassiter glances over the folder and catches his gaze. His mouth isn’t visible but there’s a smile in his eyes, and Shawn then has to cheek one of his own. 

If there’s  _ anything _ he thinks Lassie might be sick of after the past few days, it would be how indecisive of a cuddler he is. He’d be sick of it, too, in his place.

Shawn lets that deep breath go, and luckily retains a straight face as long as he’s still facing Henry.

“Yeah, Dad, I’m sure he is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen to the soundtrack on [8tracks](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/9-15-to-lompoc-fst) / [youtube](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpO1ETfG6QGa7fggiN0AUm1YeJUzOJcTN)
> 
> Other recommended listening: [psych aesthetic mix](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/under-santa-barbara-skies) / [related shassie tunes](https://8tracks.com/captainlucifer/he-s-got-your-number)
> 
> Reblog the fic graphic [here](http://bassiter.tumblr.com/post/164540247701/915-to-lompoc-a-shassie-casefic-chapters-8).
> 
> *  
> *
> 
> I've never been to Lompoc or anywhere in Santa Barbara county, but I was raised in SoCal, and I have a lot of nostalgia for the place. If it wasn't so horrendously expensive I'd really like to move back.
> 
> I also have a lot of similar feelings about my own dad as I portray Lassiter having about his (which is mostly headcanon, but he DOES say in 4x10 that he "has some family members he'd like to see in prison"), and I'm very supportive of the idea in general that you have NO obligation to love your parents. I've had this HC about Lassiter's dad for a while, now, and it's been really cathartic for me to explore it.
> 
> If this were an episode in, say, a Psych reboot, I would personally want it to be much later in the show for the sake of over-arching shassie narrative. But life isn't a TV show, and we don't have Seasons, and pining for 5+ years before getting together is just so ridiculously ANGSTY...... like I wanted this to be happy for them? And soon after the events of this fic, of course, Lassie is gonna go have dinner with Victoria and unhesitatingly sign those divorce papers and tell her all about Shawn and how happy he is now. And she's gonna be so happy for him and they'll hug and stay friends.


End file.
